Developing Performance Standards for Teacher Assessment by Policy Capturing

There is a need for assessment of teachers' competencies fostered by a growing attention given to accountability and quality improvement. Important questions are how good the demonstrated competencies of teachers should be for a satisfying assessment and how the different competencies should be weighted. Using a policy capturing method, in two rounds, nine stakeholders developed performance standards (or cut-off scores) for teacher assessment on eight criteria (or content standards) that resulted from an earlier study. Between the rounds, the panellists held a structured group discussion. Policy capturing proved to be a clear and useful method generating consistent judgements that can be described according to both a compensatory model and a conjunctive model. From the first to the second round, the consistency increased. However, while the panellists agreed to a substantial degree on the performance standards, they disagreed on the weights to be assigned to the criteria.