Considering the fact that one of the main tasks of a school leader is to provide excellent teaching and to observe, advice and help teachers to do a good job, we claim that three main issues are to be respected: - Classroom observation cannot be done without a quality framework to rely on. Criteria and indicators must be well known and respected to avoid any kind of arbitrariness. Data collection has to respect these previously stated terms of reference. - External and internal evaluation should move into a model of participation in order to gain acceptance and stability. The links between the two can be various. The main person responsible for combining internal and external elements of evaluation is the school leader. - One important link is certainly classroom observation – which can be done by any external observer, but should definitely be also in the hands of a school leader. Data for internal evaluation can be provided and balanced with data provided by external observers – although there is a difference in data collecting procedures. Thus, external evaluation does not come up as an unknown action no one wants to face, but as a further information-gathering strategy to already well-known aspects of teaching at a specific school. - Furthermore motivating teachers to observe each other (work shadowing) or to be observed by the school leader or any other member of the management team and thus encounter evaluation as a means of improvement and not controlling has a very strong impact on teaching, its quality and the dealing with feedback generally. Part of school leaders’ evaluation is therefore his/her ability of dealing with classroom observation and raises several questions: What observation grid should be used? What should be decided on in a pre-observation conversation? How should the feedback (reporting) after observation be provided? What kind of actions should be taken to improve future teaching? Our presentation will focus on the quality framework for classroom observation, on the participative evaluation and on the particular link between internal and external evaluation and the school leader when it comes to classroom observation.

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