A major component of teacher education across Europe is the assessment of teaching through observation of classroom practice. An important issue for educators involved in the initial training of teachers is how to balance providing good support for a trainee teacher’s development, whilst ensuring that they meet the necessary standards as teachers.  Educational systems across Europe are increasingly shaped by government targets and public accountability and the need for trainee teachers to meet externally-prescribed standards is of increasing importance. In the current educational climate, driven by the need to measure and assure the quality of teaching, what tensions may arise for the teacher educator in balancing the formative and developmental purposes of classroom observation with the need to measure the quality of the trainee's performance?

In the UK, the national education inspectorate, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) has introduced a new grading system (Ofsted, 2009) with the top grade defined through the term  ‘outstanding’. This paper reports on a research project on tutors in a large consortium offering initial teacher education (ITE) for trainee teachers in the Lifelong Learning Sector, involved in vocational education in colleges of Further Education (FE).  The research explored how ITE tutors in the consortium define ‘outstanding’ teaching. It also considered how  external pressures from Ofsted and college employers to grade the performance of trainee teachers, impact on their observations of classroom teaching and the feedback given to trainee teachers following the observed practice.

Defining ‘outstanding’ teaching is not a straightforward process, as previous  writings on excellent teaching have indicated. These writings suggest deficiencies in over-simplistic approaches to defining ‘excellence’ and argue that notions of ‘good practice’ need to take into account context and locality (Coffield and Edwards, 2009). Professionals do not just decide what is ‘good practice’ on their own, nor do they adopt ‘absolute’ conceptions imposed from above, but generate meanings about these concepts through membership of ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998). Furthermore, particular notions of ‘good’ teaching are underpinned by different ideological standpoints (Moore, 2004). Of relevance here is the role of the teacher educator in supporting the development of the trainee teacher through formative assessment, shaping the trainee towards an ideal of best practice. In this process the question arises – whose notion of ‘best practice’ informs the tutors’ judgements when carrying out observations of teaching and how far do external requirements for assessment of quality impact on tutor feedback to the trainee teacher? Also of relevance are debates around the purposes of assessment – assessment ‘for’ learning or assessment ‘of’ learning (Black et al, 2003).

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