Abstract
M.Ed.
Over the years, and even now, the Department of Education is busy trying to find a better
method of managing and empowering educators with the aim of attaining whole school
development. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) as early as 1992
proposed an educator developmental appraisal system. Workshops are currently
conducted to facilitate the implementation of DAS (developmental appraisal system) at
schools. This study concentrates on peer appraisal of educators as an aspect of educator
management and its contribution to whole school development.
The literature indicated that educators are dissatisfied with the traditional appraisal
instruments and the old inspection system. Hence it was abolished on the basis that it
was not transparent, not developmental and not democratic (SADTU, 1999(a):61).
Information obtained from different books clearly states that peer appraisal is a process
that directly involves all the educators in a school. It stresses the mutual understanding,
transparency and capacity building among the educators.
This research used a structured questionnaire to collect data on the opmwns of the
respondents in seven of the nine provinces in South Africa. The questionnaire contained
79 items and seven of these items were relevant to peer appraisal. The structured
questionnaires were distributed to a convenient stratified sample of educators in seven of
the nine provinces.
Based on the information from the questionnaire, each item relevant to this particular
research was analysed and discussed. After the factor analysis, the significance of the
difference between the factor mean scores of various groups for each of the factors that
make up whole school development were analysed and explained.
The data obtained indicates that peer appraisal of educators has a positive impact on the
professional development of educators. An atmosphere of collegial relationships among
staff is a pre-requisite for whole school development. It appears as if the learning and
teaching process can be improved through the implementation of peer appraisal m
schools.