This post is a summary of some of the dilemmas I have faced in my lesson observations since 1994, when I sat in on another teacher’s lesson for the first time. My intention is to raise a few relevant questions without necessarily proposing any answers or solutions.
I will use the pronoun you to invite you to either wear your observer’s hat or put yourself in an observer’s shoes. For the sake of reader-friendliness, I will alternate between he and she when referring to the teacher who is being observed.
First, the most important question:
What is it exactly that you want to achieve through lesson observation?
Lesson observation seems to fall into two broad categories:
“Prescriptive” observation, which involves:
a. Helping teachers master a number of discrete skills
b. Training teachers to implement a given methodology
c. Establishing some of the do’s and don’ts of classroom practice
d. Helping teachers develop routinized procedures and responses to classroom events
e. Pointing out the “good” and “in need of improvement” aspects of the lesson
f. Achieving standardization and quality control.
“Reflective” observation, which entails:
a. Understanding what the teacher is trying to do on its own terms
b. Helping “intuitive teachers” become “principled teachers”
c. Understanding how teachers interpret a given methodology
d. Helping teachers reassess their existing beliefs and discover their own alternatives
e. Helping teachers move beyond routinized procedures and responses to classroom events
f. Giving non-judgmental feedback
Up until recently, I used to think of prescriptive and reflective as two separate entities. Today I realize that this distinction is conceptually wobbly. True, novice teachers need a fair amount of objective, procedural guidance, but that doesn’t rule out the need for reflection, self-awareness, and critical thinking. The opposite is also true: Experienced teachers may sometimes need feedback of a more overt, prescriptive nature. In other words, the two categories are not mutually exclusive.
This means that when you observe a class, you need to be clear about your primary focus – and the key word here is primary. The teacher needs to know exactly what your agenda is, what she should expect from the feedback process, and what the stakes are. So, if you’re there mostly as a non-judgmental mentor, tell her. If you’re there mostly as a manager/assessor, to ensure that certain standards are being met, tell her. If, during the feedback session, you feel the need to alternate between both roles, let her know as well. Be as transparent as you can.
And now, on to the dilemmas themselves:
Dilemma 1: Should you read the lesson plan at all?
Yes seems like the most logical answer here. Becoming a better teacher involves learning how to write sound and coherent lesson plans, and it’s only natural that you should help the teacher in that department. Far from being a straight-jacket, careful planning helps the teacher free up attentional resources during the actual lesson so she can think on her feet, focus on the students, and respond to different events as they unfold – reflecting in action, if you will. But there’s something to be said for not discussing the plan beforehand.
Over the years, I have been able to derive a lot of interesting insights from the (few) classes I have observed without a pre-lesson discussion. I have often found myself wondering, for example, what exactly the teacher was trying to achieve through a given activity, how the different steps were connected, and where the class was headed. These are questions that may not have crossed my mind if I’d read the plan, and, more importantly, questions that the students might have been silently asking themselves, too. So, it seems that when you observe a lesson without any kind of road map, you can see things from a different vantage point and experience the lesson from a different perspective – perhaps one that is closer to the learners’.
Dilemma 2: If you do read the lesson plan, should you intervene?
By commenting on the plan “preemptively”, you can help the teacher phrase his aims better (e.g. “enable students to talk about experiences using the present perfect with ever” vs. “teach the present perfect”), anticipate potential problems, avoid common pitfalls, and set up activities more effectively. These are, of course, key skills that a teacher needs to master.
However, you might inadvertently impose your own agenda on the teacher, and end up observing a lesson that is half his and half yours, so to speak. This in itself is not necessarily the end of the world, as your comments could encourage the teacher to take a stab at activities, techniques, and strategies that he may otherwise have been unaware of. The problem is that you might end up making suggestions that the teacher is not developmentally ready to implement. Or, perhaps more significantly, suggesting changes that will clash with his personal learning theories – his sense of plausibility. I don’t mean to say, of course, that we shouldn’t help teachers articulate and question their own tacit beliefs, but the pre-lesson discussion might not be the best place to do it.
And if you do intervene, keep in mind that you might be blamed for whatever goes wrong in the lesson!
Dilemma 3: Should you agree on an observation focus?
To deal with the sheer complexity of lesson observation, we often isolate one or two discrete teaching skills (e.g. “Today I’m going to pay close attention to how you set up pair and group work”) and focus primarily on these during the lesson and the feedback session. This is more or less standard practice in ELT, and it makes a lot of sense. By narrowing down the scope of your observation, you can focus on the teacher’s most immediate needs (self-perceived or otherwise) and hopefully provide relevant feedback that she will be developmentally ready to internalize and act on.
But things are not so simple.
Over the years, time and time again, I have found myself straying from the agreed-on observation focus. Lessons are organic, living things, with a very large number of interacting variables at play, and the teacher will inevitably have to respond to classroom events that may be only marginally related to the initial focal points. This means that if you set out to observe, say, a teacher’s use of the board, you might end up paying more attention to her ability to deal with unexpected grammar questions, error correction, disruptive students, or what have you. In other words, there seems to be an inherent tension between pre-lesson discrete developmental goals and “emerging” interventions and teaching behaviors. This is a tension I have always had trouble addressing.
Another problem is that classroom phenomena are often connected, which means it may be hard to establish the right focal points. For example, say you want to help a teacher present grammar more economically. There’s a possibility that her high TTT might be the real culprit, and that the drown-out grammar presentations are just the tip of the iceberg. And let’s not forget that TTT, in turn, is a subset of a teacher’s verbal behavior as a whole, which includes, for example, wait time. So, which issue do you address first, and how?
Dilemma 4: Should you walk into the classroom with the teacher, or wait a few minutes before going in?
If you watch a lesson from the very beginning, you can see for yourself how the teacher greets the students, warms them up, deals with latecomers, and sets the tone for the rest of the class. But if you skip the first five or even ten minutes – which I have sometimes been asked to do – the teacher will have a chance to warm up, adjust to the energy in the room, and connect with the students before you go in. And to some people, this might make all the difference.
Thanks for reading.
I’d be interested to know what your lesson observation dilemmas are.
