Internationally, various forms of teacher assessment have emerged as new tools for governing and developing educational quality. In line with accountability policies and increasing use of assessment tools which produce ‘data’ on student performance, teacher assessment is seen by many governments as an important mean to enhance student performance results (Murphy et al. 2013).  Several studies have been conducted internationally, and the USA and England are until now the most prominent contributors to the field (cf. Hallinger et al. 2014). There is no strong tradition of teacher assessment in Norway, and Norwegian principals and teachers have until recent years experienced a working context characterized by a relatively high degree of autonomy and government-backed trust that professionals do their jobs in the best possible ways.  Along with more output-oriented approaches to govern schools, we see a shift from “trust in the profession” to “trust in results”. As a consequence, different forms of teacher assessment are emerging as means for school leaders to develop the quality of teaching and learning.

Until now, there is limited research and knowledge about teacher assessment in the Norwegian context. Generally, the review aims to identify research gaps that might give direction for further studies on teacher assessment and data use in education.

It is part of an ongoing empirical study on how practices related to teacher assessment is shaped by the local school governing context and mediated and negotiated by principals, department heads and teachers in three schools which are located in a municipality with a strong focus on performance management as part of school governing. This paper presents a review of research on teacher assessment conducted over the last two decades. The aim is to explore teacher assessment practices in use, as reported in various empirical studies, to identify different functions as well as intended and unintended consequences. The review has a particular focus on how student performance data is used as part of assessing teachers’ work, and to what extent these data are used for summative and/or formative purposes. The question of inquiry is: What characterizes existing research on teacher assessment where student results are used to assess teachers’ work, and what are the main results of this body of research?

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