On 26 May 2026, the National Education Council, in partnership with the Lusófona University of Lisbon, organised the seminar ‘Teacher Performance Evaluation: Policies, Practices and Effects’, bringing together national and international experts to reflect on one of the most relevant and challenging issues in contemporary education policy.

Teacher performance evaluation is a complex and often controversial topic, yet it plays a decisive role in improving the quality of education and in teachers’ professional development. In general terms, it is important to understand how evaluation processes can contribute to teachers’ professional development, to the improvement of teaching practices and, consequently, to students’ learning and academic outcomes.

This reflection involves considering the principles and assumptions underpinning evaluation models, their procedures and methodologies, the objectives they are designed to achieve, and their effects — both intended and unintended. Among the central issues under discussion is the possibility of reconciling summative purposes, geared towards the management of teaching careers, with formative purposes centred on teachers’ professional development.

In this context, the seminar facilitated a discussion of the policies, practices and effects of teacher performance evaluation, analysing its ethical, methodological and pedagogical implications from both a national and international perspective.

The opening session featured presentations by Professor António Teodoro, Director of the Institute of Education and Scientific Coordinator of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Education and Development; Professor Maria Assunção Flores, Coordinator of the Specialised Committee on Teachers and Other Education Professionals of the National Education Council; Professor Domingos Fernandes, President of the National Education Council; and Professor Luís Cláudio Ribeiro, Vice-Rector of Lusófona University.

The seminar’s keynote speaker was Professor Melissa Tuytens, from Ghent University in Belgium, who presented the paper ‘Teacher Evaluation as an Integral Part of Strategic Human Resource Management in Schools’, addressing teacher evaluation as an integral part of strategic human resource management in schools.

Two thematic panels were held during the event. The first, entitled “Teacher performance evaluation: theoretical and methodological perspectives”, featured presentations by Professor Maria Assunção Flores (University of Minho), Professor Elsa Estrela (Lusófona University of Lisbon) and Beatrice Ávalos (University of Chile), moderated by Professor André Freitas (Lusófona University of Lisbon).