How would one go about determining a quality of teaching? Or, rather, the quality of a teacher? Say, you have a teacher in your school, you want to know if he is good or not, so you can replace him or keep him. What do you do?

It seems a difficult question and it seems that judging the quality of work the teacher does is really hard, especially if harmonious personality development is much higher on your agenda than getting end-year tests passed. Some thoughts on the matter include:

• Participating in a class (what if you do not understand the subject completely and cannot judge?)
• Reading through class plans, trying to figure how much effort the teacher puts into preparation
• Interviewing pupils or students for both their feeling and their understanding of the subject
• Setting independent tests (problems with tests are huge and numerous, so this may not quite work)

But there must be already some methods that work… Aren’t there?… -->