Teacher appraisal practices in European countries

In every country, universities are bureaucratic institutions, and professorial power has weakened everywhere as academic institutions become larger and demands for accountability mount (Altbach, 2002). Two subsequent World Wars and intermittent unrests have changed the political equations for power, thus transforming the academic state of affairs. Regarding teacher evaluation, the University of Amsterdam Quality (UvA Q) Evaluations explains in its University website (source:

http://www.uva.nl/en/education/quality-of-education/results/teaching-evaluations/teaching-evaluations.html), is for the harmonized evaluation of teaching quality. In its detailed explanation of the procedure, the UvA Q is used to gather student opinions, as well as information about courses and experiences with lecturers. The information enables the Boards of Studies to identify differences in appraisal and ratings and to take appropriate action, while Colleges and Graduate Schools can use the information to permanently steer performance on the basis of teaching quality. Not much literature was obtained about German Campuses except that evaluation of tenure-track or junior professoriate is recommended at the University of Freiburg, Germany (University of Freiburg 2014).

For the indicators concerned with the activity and performance of higher education institutions, Trente indicateurs sur les universités françaises (“thirty indicators on French universities”) includes the third group of indicators which focuses on the structure of research:

the percentage of those who are both teachers and researchers pursuing their activity in nationally recognized teams; the percentage of full-time researchers and of engineers and technicians who belong to research organisations (Tavenas 2003). At the unit level, evaluation of research activity is limited to examining the number of teachers with grant

Teacher Appraisal at Universities in Hungary: Comparison of Indian Policies and the European Context

support, the number and amount of grants obtained, the size of the publication output, and the supervision of doctoral students (numbers, average length of courses, graduation rates).

Interestingly, all Swiss universities have policies for the evaluation of teaching. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while establishing the University of Luxembourg, explains the Articles 41 and 42 of Chapter V of the law refer to the mechanisms planned for the internal and external evaluation of the university. The evaluation will cover all teaching, research and administrative activities.

There has been sparse implementation and experimentation of teacher appraisal at higher education in different fringes of Europe. Various professors from the Universidad Politécnica and Autónoma de Madrid [Polytechnic and Autonomous University of Madrid]

carried out a study in 2010, in which they attempted to develop a system of university teaching and quality evaluation indicators used at different Spanish universities (Moreno-Murcia, Torregrosa & Pedreno 2015). In Spain, the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) has established a teaching performance assessment programme, DOCENTIA, in cooperation with all regional evaluation agencies where the participation is voluntary for universities. Assessment of the teaching staff based on the DOCENTIA programme plays a very important role in teachers’ accreditation applications.

On 21 December 2006 the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) published the Directrices para la elaboración de títulos universitarios de grado y master [Directives for the preparation of university degrees and master’s degrees], where the teaching evaluation has been focused solely on assessing the acquisition of knowledge or lack thereof on the part of the students in terms of higher or lowers academic performance (Buendía 1996). The students are the ones who have most commonly been chosen to evaluate the quality of teaching performance. In this regard, Tejedor and Gracia (1996) point out that the reference criteria of the students should not be the only one, since there are a number of contributions to be made in relation to the agents evaluating the professor, with the main ones being the students, other professors, and the professor him or herself (García and Congosto, 2000).

In Polish Universities, periodic reviews of faculty are performed, but they generally do not have any direct consequences for academics (Kwiek, 2002).The Bulgarian universities connect promotions directly to the central issue of faculty evaluations. In this regard, Slantcheva (2002) reiterates that the evaluations precede every promotion decision and dissertation defense. Regular evaluations take place every three years for non-habilitated staff and every five years for habilitated staff. There has been changes since1999 to the law on higher education: minimum evaluations should consider course attendance; development of new seminars and related exercises; textbooks and readers; research and participation in research contracts and international research cooperation; and advising students and consulting with specialists. On this basis, institutions of higher education develop their own evaluation criteria. Evaluations are conducted mainly through peer review by the scientific council (which consists mostly of habilitated staff) at the faculty level. However, regular

evaluations are rather routine, rarely yielding any significant results. The procedure involves courses taught, students, exams administered, publications, and meetings attended.

Slantcheva further elaborates that the use of student evaluations has gradually increased at some institutions, but not to the extent that would allow them to be employed as a mechanism for the improvement of teaching.

Although the analysis has given a picture of what has been held more than a decade ago, it is still the case that at many institutions student evaluations do not exist. Where they do exist, it is often only due to the goodwill of individual faculty members that student feedback is sought. Results from student evaluations are only rarely taken into consideration in faculty evaluations and promotions. This panoramic depiction of teacher appraisal, somehow, explains the similarity of academic sociology in India.

On Russian campuses, the assessment of teaching and research at higher education institutions is based on the number of publications and the caliber of journals in which they appeared, the references in the relevant citation indexes, the number of specialist, master’s, candidate, and doctoral students prepared, the evaluations by colleagues and administrators, and course ratings by students (Smolentseva 2002). The student rating system is the aspect of faculty evaluation that has provoked the most debate in the academic community. As a rule, students are asked to evaluate faculty members on professional competence, teaching skills, and personal attributes. The evaluations are usually initiated by the administration, and are either made available to all or restricted to the faculty member, the Chair, and the Dean. The main argument against them is skepticism about students' ability to evaluate teaching quality. A sampling of European countries has shown an interesting trail of teacher appraisal. While Western Europe has been generous enough to pool student evaluation of teachers, Eastern and Central Europe keep a conservative eye in considering students as the potential appraisers of “teaching”. In this regard, Hungarian Universities have shown the autonomy to design their own appraisal procedure and student evaluation of teachers. Although, since student feedback hardly affects favorably or adversely a teacher’s career, more emphasis has been given to quantification of research activities. This overemphasis on research activities and publication of papers has given a rise to predatory publication, mainly in developing countries. One broad area that has seen many victims of predatory journals is Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia. In these regions, academic evaluation is often based merely on counting the number of papers published. This matches perfectly with predatory journals, who offer quick, easy, and cheap publishing (Beall 2016).These predatory journals have quickly penetrated and bloomed as an industry in Indian due to blind reliance on quantification of published papers as the main criteria for faculty evaluation. Of course, research activities of the teachers are evaluated primarily while teaching remains in the background. However, evaluation of classroom performance is slowly progressing.

Teacher Appraisal at Universities in Hungary: Comparison of Indian Policies and the European Context