ABSTRACT
If appraisal is to have school improvement as its main concern, then it follows that what teachers spend most of their time engaged in-involving their pupils in the learning process, that is, teaching-must be a central feature of the appraisal process. Classroom observation reveals ‘a view of the climate, rapport, interaction and functioning of the classroom available from no other source’ (Evertson and Holley, 1981). It is an essential feature of staff development. Not only is it valuable in its own right, as a vehicle for one-to-one in-service education and the sharing of ideas within the school on teaching content and methodology; it also is vital in order to ensure that both the goalsetting and the interview elements of appraisal relate, not to abstractions, but to what is for most teachers the key element of their role.
