Some time ago I debated the issue of whether teachers should use social software and what sort of challenged they are going to face. A recent decision by a German court pushes the boundary further, by ruling that pupils can rate teachers on line.
The next step might be the possibility for pupils to shoot short videos to witness teachers’ performances to support their ratings, or to record inappropriate behaviors of sort.
Teachers are just one category of public workers exposed to new levels of transparency and to a constant blurring of the boundaries between performance management and privacy. Doctors, nurses, or any other citizen-facing employee will be at risk of being rated, seeing his or her performance appraisals crowdsourced and featuring on video sharing sites.
Students already take pictures or videos of their teachers with a mobile phone and upload those on YouTube or Flickr. These behaviors are usually an appropriately punished as invasion of privacy. However things may change quite soon. I would not be surprised if some protective parents encouraged their kids to collect evidence to use when challenging their teachers’ marks.
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Quite an interesting topic!!! What should be the limit of grassroot initiatives dedicated to the evaluation of public services? It is not only the case of education services. Similar objections could be expressed related ro health services or even justice.