Teachers abilities to facilitate the learning and assessment and the students time within the practice placement. Quality is integral to the provision of best practice in both higher education and clinical practice (Bailey-McHale and Hart 2013). Fox (2011 in McIntosh et al) refers to 2 aspects to quality; quality enhancement and quality assurance. The latter refers to the reviewing and judging of defined standards, whereas quality enhancement leads to service improvement through detailed enquiry. Kilgallon and Thomson (2012) define evaluation as an ongoing part of the learning process and involves judging to what extent aspects of the learning have been successful. This means that Mentors or Practice Teachers need to judge whether they have assisted with the students learning and assessment experience and how well they have contributed to the development of students’ knowledge and skills. By doing so it will enable them to develop and enhance their skills as a Mentor / Practice Teacher. Therefore, Mentors and Practice Teachers need to evaluate the practice learning through a wide variety of mechanisms such as; University student evaluations, Educational Audits, Professional Body Monitoring process, Self and Peer Review and student feedback via forums, Gopee (2011) concurs with the above but goes onto to stress that evaluation is the process of systematically collecting and analysing information to form a judgment from evidence to determine the value and worth of something. According to Aston and Hallam (2011) evaluation is more of an umbrella term, the origin of which means the overarching value of the learning experience and how worthwhile the practice learning has been. Therefore, evaluation is a systematic process of obtaining feedback via various forms from relevant people such as; student feedback, self and peer review / evaluation and from the Higher Education Institute’s (HEI’s) quality monitoring reports. This feedback should then be reviewed and action plans devised in order to implement any necessary changes (Aston and
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