Type of Evaluation and Features of the Activity to Be Evaluated: Where Does the Trap Lie? The Case of the Teaching Excellence Framework

The article adopts the Management Control Theory (MCT) perspective to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of tasks/activities to be assessed and the type of assessment employed. Two analytical dimensions are considered: the measurability/attributability of outputs and the knowledge of cause-effect relations producing outputs. The introduction of an evaluation system of teaching in higher education is here used as case-study. The article shows how the complexity of teaching, expressed by a high interdependency among actors and multiple heterogeneous outputs, is not adequately tackled by an evaluation system that is narrowly focused on the quantifcation of observable outputs. Unintended consequences might therefore arise.