Opportunities and challenges in assessing teaching: Lessons from Germany

Teachers should be able to meet the demands of the classroom; in the language of teaching quality research, they should have the required ‘competences’ to be effective. But what are these competences, and can they be assessed accurately? This article explores some possible approaches and challenges in defining these competences and in assessing against them through a review of a project with mathematics teachers in Germany known as the COACTIV study (Kunter et al., 2013). It is worth noting that both teacher competence and its assessment are emotive issues. It should never be assumed that all the competences required for effective teaching can be assessed reliably: not everything can be measured. Nonetheless, teaching makes a difference to student learning, and certain key characteristics are found repeatedly in studies of teaching effectiveness and, as such, deserve consideration. This article is written with the following caution: ‘The more any quantitative social indicat