The Skillful Teacher

Giving Helpful Evaluations
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of one’s student’s remonstrance to me after I had declared my com-
mitment to teaching democratically, “Your So-Called Democracy
is Hypocritical Because You Can Always Fail Us” (Baptiste and
Brookfield, 1997).
For those of us who wish to build collegial, supportive relation-
ships with students, giving evaluations is one of the most difficult,
demanding, and complex tasks we face; yet, done well, it is also one
of the most significant spurs to learning. Through having their work
evaluated, students learn to deepen their understandings, improve
their skills, and become aware of new learning projects. They learn
to internalize criteria for judging their work and practice that alter
significantly how they approach these activities. So we should never
forget that students invest enormous significance in teachers’ eval-
uations of their work. Even students who have created confident
social faces and built strong protective walls around their egos will
find a negative comment from a teacher to be quite devastating.
Alternatively, an appreciative comment from the same teacher can
deepen commitment to learning. In terms of experiencing impos-
torship, receiving a poor evaluation may well be the moment when
students conclude that their essential incompetence, their fraudu-
lent entry into the community of learners, has finally been discov-
ered and publicly revealed. Not surprisingly, then, giving evaluations
is (quite appropriately) the feature of practice that gives rise to some
of the most protracted and tortuous soul-searching among college
teachers over the course of their careers. And this is how it should
be! If we forget for a moment the impact our evaluative judgments
have on students, or ignore the tremendous difference these judg-
ments can make to the direction, intensity, and emotional tenor of
students’ learning, then we lose much of our sensitivity as teachers.
For this reason, constantly asking yourself whether your evaluative
judgments are fair and helpful, whether they are expressed under-
standably, and whether you’re avoiding the traps of favoritism or
prejudice is one sure sign of critically responsive teaching.
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Giving evaluations is also important because it affords us the
chance to exemplify aspects of the credibility and authenticity that,
as Chapter Four pointed out, are so valued by learners. One impor-
tant indicator of credibility—teacher conviction—is recognized
when teachers make it plain to learners that they feel the subject
matter, content, or skills being taught are so crucial that they want
to explore every possible way they can to make sure students have
learned these properly. The most common indicator of teacher con-
viction mentioned by students is the receipt of individual feedback
or attention. The degree of detail, the clarity, the frequency, and
the extensiveness of evaluations are correlated with learners’ per-
ceptions of the importance of the learning being judged. The more
these features are present in evaluations, the more students see that
teachers really believe this learning is important.
In terms of authenticity, the indicator of responsiveness—of the
teacher clearly basing her practice on what she learns about how
students are experiencing learning—is also addressed by evaluation.
When teachers give students frequent evaluative information, and
when they show how their evaluative judgments shape their learn-
ing, they are demonstrating responsiveness. Evaluation also speaks
to the indicator of full disclosure, to the teacher’s regularly making
public the criteria, expectations, agendas, and assumptions that
guide her practice. When students know what standards, criteria,
and expectations they are being judged against, they are more likely
to feel that they can trust the teacher to deal with them honestly
and openly.
To evaluate something is to judge its worth. Concluding that one
paper is better than another (because it is written more clearly, argued
with more evidence cited, able to critique accurately the reliability
of sources reviewed, and so on), or that one instrumental performance
is more skilled than another (because it is closer to a professionally
prescribed norm, adjusts well to unforeseen interferences, or produces
the desired result in a shorter time) is to make a judgment on the basis
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of certain criteria. As argued earlier, these criteria are sometimes
externally imposed on teachers by ministries of education, licensing
boards, accreditation agencies, or department heads, and it may be
that the teachers concerned believe these criteria are mistaken, ill-
informed, even harmful. If you feel that you are teaching to indefen-
sible criteria, then you have four options. First, you can grin and bear
it and end up teaching to criteria you disagree with, a situation so
contradictory as to produce anger, self-hatred, cynicism, and resigna-
tion. Second, you can quit your job. Third, you can work to alter
these criteria by organizing with colleagues to change the require-
ments set by external licensing bodies. And, fourth, you can do what
most settle for—move back and forth between your own agenda and
that of the sponsoring authority, making sure your learners are
equipped to move forward institutionally by doing enough of what is
required of them while simultaneously undermining, subverting, or
at least critiquing (and encouraging your students to critique) what
to you are nonsensical evaluative criteria.
Some teachers try to escape the undeniably judgmental nature
of evaluation by seeking refuge in the notion that evaluation is the
value-free measurement of performance (a horrible word to describe
learning with its connotations of going through one’s paces in a cir-
cus ring, or of mounting a false show of competence to impress 
people) that can be judged according to objective criteria and indi-
cators. But such criteria and indicators are never completely objec-
tive if that is taken to mean they are free of human judgment. In
the last analysis evaluative criteria always rest on someone’s belief
that acting and thinking in certain ways is better than acting and
thinking in other ways. To teach is to judge. As Freire (Shor
and Freire, 1987, p. 2) argued:
Education always has a directive nature we can’t deny.
The teacher has a plan, a program, a goal for the study.
But there is the directive liberating educator on the one
hand, and the directive domesticating educator on the
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other. The liberating educator is different from the
domesticating one because he or she moves more and
more towards a moment in which an atmosphere of
camaraderie is established in class. This does not mean
that the teacher is equal to the students or becomes an
equal to the students. No, the teacher begins different
and ends different. The teacher gives grades and assigns
papers to write. The students do not grade the teacher or
give the teacher homework assignments! The teacher
must also have a critical competence in his or her sub-
ject that is different from the students and which the stu-
dents should insist on. But here is the central issue: In
the liberating classroom, these differences are not antag-
onistic ones, as they are in the authoritarian classroom.
The liberating difference is a tension which the teacher
tries to overcome by a democratic attitude to his or her
own directiveness.
Three important points concerning evaluation are made in Freire’s
comment. The first, and most obvious, is that teaching, and by impli-
cation evaluation, is always value-laden. The criteria we employ to
decide that some educational approaches and curricular directions
are more useful, just, important, relevant, humane, effective, or equi-
table than others are, at root, value judgments. Teachers always have
an agenda, a direction in which they wish to take students that they
believe is more worthwhile or important than the alternatives. In
Freire’s words, “Education is always directive, always. The question is
to know towards what and with whom it is directive” (Shor and
Freire, 1987, p. 109).
Second, Freire speaks of how liberating educators move towards
collegial, collaborative modes of practice. In evaluative terms, this
is seen when teachers and students evolve evaluative criteria and
specify indicators together, when teachers encourage self-evaluation
and peer-evaluation among their students, and when evaluative 
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criteria and indicators established by teachers are placed before learn-
ers for their critique, scrutiny, and negotiation. Third, there is the
difference Freire implies between authoritarian and authoritative
teaching. The former imposes its will by the sheer force of tradition
or institutional power. The latter imposes its will through the cred-
ibility, trust, and authenticity teachers establish in students’ eyes
(what Freire describes as the critical competence that the students
should insist on). When teachers exhibit critical competence, they
display expertise of a sufficient depth and breadth to convince stu-
dents that they are sure to find their learning enhanced by being in
the teacher’s presence. Teachers with critical competence are aware
of how their teaching contributes to making the world a better place,
either as part of a broader social and political vision, or through the
development of their individual students’ capacities. Finally, they are
able to engage in a constant critique of their vision and their
methodology, and are eager to engage students in this critique.
Teachers who possess these attributes of critical competence are
authoritative but not authoritarian.