Abstract
Since the Central Education Council of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology made a suggestion, in its report on local educational administration in 1998, that schools should carry outa selfevaluation annually and make public its results so as to make them more open and accountable to their respective communities, public schools all over Japan have been establishing a school evaluation system. Today selfevaluation by teachers is practiced by more than 95% of public primary and lower secondary schools in Japan. However, the knowledge base of those dealing with evaluation tasks in schools is quite limited. The literature on school evaluation is on the increase in recent years, but much of it is no more than tracing of the practice and attempts at theoretical sorting of the practices are rarely made. In the present paper, the theory of school evaluation is depicted as consisting of a two-layered structure with a theory of school evaluation mechanism (school evaluation system) and a theory of school evaluation practice (evaluation methods). A framework is presented for analysing them with a focus on practice. The concluding section of the paper sorts out the issues in movingfrom the mechanism to practice.
