Abstract:

The inspection process, present in current pedagogical science and practice deserves increased attention of all participants in the education process. What new time brings is a new style of management and a new understanding of the inspecting activity, which creates a partnership between the inspector and the teacher. It intends to promote mutual understanding between them, which is to be based on the principles of democracy. Innovations in educational practice also affect the realization of inspecting activity. The aim of the inspectors is to promote their activity not merely as a checking tool of the teaching process but as a methodological help to teachers.

Among the tools of systematic and systemic evaluation of the education process, inspection plays a crucial role, but for the sake of justice other ones need to be mention too, such as testing of students, change of curriculum, use of activating teaching methods or use of modern teaching tools. Inspections are a very valuable source of information on education quality, since through its media we may obtain immediate (empirical experience of the class interaction) and true (inspector could objectively sense both performance of teacher and reaction of students) knowledge about the actual quality and a method of providing the education process, in addition to that, behaviour of the teacher and his/her students at the lesson is displayed as well.

The study feeds from both the theoretical analysis of the above presented issues and from the research. The findings were analysed, compared, and conclusions were drawn for school practice. We used the following research methods: content analysis of the existing literature, the quantity method of gathering data by the medium of a questionnaire consisting of twelve questions (statements) and statistical methods for data processing. The goal of our research was to map the state of the inspecting activity at selected high schools and to find changes in teachers' views on inspecting activity over the twenty-year horizon. The first research was carried out in 1998 and the second one in 2017. We analysed and compared final results of the research focused on determining opinions on inspecting activities. This comparative study, having taken into account the twenty-year time span, has shown, first that the inspectors (school leaders) have acquired such methods of evaluating their teachers, which objectively report their actual performance, second that the most beneficial inspections for the teachers' own pedagogical work are the inspections conducted by members of the school management, third that tendency of inspectors to adhere to pedagogical ethics is increasing, and fifth that tendency toward formalism drops and the same is true for the subjective evaluation of work, which is proven by its disappearance from the conclusions of the inspection. What can be concluded, based on our research is, that during the course of two decades, significant changes have taken place in realization of inspections, both on the part of the inspectors as well as on the part of the teachers and their perception of inspections.

Keywords:

Educational process, quality of the educational process, inspections.