Abstract:

In recent decades, reforms of Italian school systems are targeting on the evaluation as a key factor in improving the quality of teaching, recognizing, among other things, teachers’ merit and/or demerit and eventually providing incentivisation. The issue of teacher evaluation, included into the more general field of school evaluation, has systematically involved all stakeholders: policymakers, trade unions, professional communities. A sign of this renovated debate is the approval, with the Decree of the President of the Italian Republic, n° 80 of 28 March 2013, about the Regulation of the National System of Valuation, provided for by Law July 13, 2015, n° 107. The above-mentioned law, and particularly clause 126-130, focuses on teachers’ merit valorisation. This paper wants to emphasize the role of the teacher: a professionalism capable of generating the enhancement in quality and effectiveness of the educational system. The teacher profile describes a complex profession, which does not end with the work done into the class but proceeds throughout the whole school institution and in the social community. For this reason, a reflection on the valorisation of the merit of the teachers’ professionalism should be considered, with respect to the changes introduced by the legislator in the Italian institutional and educational context, duly taking into consideration the other countries policies. These authors also analyse the role of the Evaluation Committee and provide a detailed description of the approach that holds the pressing topic of teacher evaluation in Italy. In the first part of the paper will be dedicated to the analysis of the teacher professional attributes, specifically about the set of knowledge and competences that qualify this profile; in the second part, we discuss the theme of merit valorisation as a factor for improving the quality of the teaching strategies.

Keywords:

Teacher evaluation, incentivisation, teacher professionalism, quality, merit.