Putting the Self Back into Self-Evaluation

Self-evaluation is a concept replete with paradox and ambiguity. It suggests a sponta-neous impulse but connotes a political mandate. It posits an individual act of self-reflection but is a meaningless notion without some social reference point. Its application may be personal, social or institutional, its purpose summative or forma-tive. It may be interpreted as either a product or a process. In the so-called ‘postmodern society ’ nothing is more characteristic than its ambiva-lence – hierarchy and community, compliance and reciprocity, conformity and variety, ownership and delivery, stability and change, trust and contract, tactical improvement and capacity-building. Self-evaluation as schools have come to know it in the last half decade sits uncomfortably within this Janus-facing hypercomplexity. In 2004 it is hard to find schools in which self-evaluation is an organic growth from the grass roots of classroom practice or derived from what is most valued by teachers. Most typically it has been adopted from the top down – from local authority schemes, from the OFSTED framework or ‘designer ’ packages. Rather than expressing the uniqueness and diversity of the individual school, self-evaluation, such as much else in the nation-