At the end of December I was fortunate to be invited by Nino Chachanidze, the organizer and the executive, to attend The Sixth Annual International Conference of CETE (Center For English Teaching Excellence) and TESOL Affiliate in Geoprgia at Ilia State University. As always, the schedule of participants and the subjects of their presentations looked very inspiring, and made a good purpose of attending.

The first guest, Mark Algren from University of Missouri, was switching online directly from  the USA, nevertheless, the audience was undoubtedly  captured  by the description of The Instructor Evaluation Programme  that has been used for the effective evaluation of Teachers of English around the world.

The CEA (Commission on English Language Program Accreditation ) Standards for English Language Programs and Institutions comprise 44 individual standards in 11 standards areas. They were developed initially by a committee that took into consideration the various English language program standards that existed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The standard areas are based on those required by U.S. Department of Education regulations for accrediting agencies that seek recognition by that agency. The individual standards throughout the standard areas reflect what is considered good practice in the field of English language teaching and administration.

Standard on Assessment of Teaching :The program or language institution describes to faculty clearly and in writing the performance criteria and procedures for evaluation at the onset of the evaluation period; conducts faculty performance evaluations that are systematic, regular, fair, objective, and relevant to achieving program or institutional goals; and conveys evaluation results to faculty in writing in a timely manner.

This programme must demonstrate an open-minded, developmental and reliable evaluation of faculty. Effective evaluation methods are marked by an appropriate notification that people know that they are going to be evaluated with appropriate frequency from administration know how often it is going to happen in consideration of multiple sources of data.

The standard seeks to discourage capricious or unplanned evaluation, evaluation procedures that rely on single methods and sources of data, procedures that do not allow the faculty input, or that do not allow faculty members to respond to their evaluation.

Following Nino’s advice to ask a question personally, I tried not to miss the opportunity to express my deepest concern with the greatest importance of the subject as the  teacher evaluation is viewed at the moment, and Mark has admitted that the priority for the evaluation is the teacher itself.