TeacherTapp recently did a poll asking teachers if they felt observations and feedback had helped them to improve. And I was a little surprised by the results
55% of teachers couldn't say that observations and feedback were helping them become a better teacher. That's...not great. I think the problem with observations is bidentate. Has two arms, if you will. There's the problem with the communicated purpose of the observation and there's the problem with the feedback in general.
NB: This is all from the perspective of a classroom teacher. I have observed a fair few teachers, but I still regard myself as learning the trade.
Observations should, indeed must, be tool to help staff improve. This should be communicated effectively to all staff, especially those doing the observing. An observation should not be a stick to beat a teacher with. That's how you demoralise your staff, increase turn-over, and generally have things fall apart at the seams. A good department is generally a stable one - it's hard to have consistency and shared purpose and camaraderie when the team is constantly changing. I don't believe [and I'm happy to have my mind changed] that an observer should be going in to find fault. They should be going in to see what's happening. While they're there, of course, they will find things that can be improved, but that's not the reason they went in. If you go in looking to find fault, that is what you'll see, and you risk missing the good practice.
I cannot tell you how many observations I've had at past schools where observations felt like they were there to catch you out. I thought I was bad at my job. When you come from a school like that, an observation - whether that's a formal observation, a learning walk, or some visitors sitting in the back of your room - can feel supremely daunting. But when the narrative is about improvement, improvement, improvement, it stops feeling so daunting [don't get me wrong, it's still stressful, but it's not up-all-night-panicking stressful]. In the weirdest way, I looked forward to my formal observation last term. I knew, no matter what happened, that I would learn, that I would improve, that I would come out of it a marginally better teacher than I went in. And I did.
The other problem with observations is the feedback. I firmly believe good feedback can make or break an observation. If the feedback is shite, the whole observation was a waste of time. It's hard to learn from shite feedback. It's not impossible, but it is more difficult.
Feedback should be three-fold:
- It should be specific. What exactly needs to improve? I was observed* the other day, and I let some of my students unfocus slightly during a longer explanation of an additional correct answer. They'd got the first part correct, so they'd ticked it, and then basically zoned out a bit until I called them back to write in the additional correct answer. As a result they could tell me the additional correct answer, but not the reason why it was correct.It would be very easy for an observer to say "you need to make sure students are focused during the self-assessment", which isn't technically untrue, but it's not specific enough. It doesn't tell me what the 'problem' was, and there's also a chance I'd disagree - students were pretty focused, they got all the corrections.
- Action steps should be provided. What do I need to do? Sometimes we can identify the places we've gone wrong. We just don't know what to do about it. Same goes for the things we maybe haven't identified. Having had them pointed out to us, it's like, okay, so how do I fix it? During my NQT year, I was put on a support plan because my marking wasn't good enough. The problem was I had no idea what was wrong with my marking, and my mentor didn't tell me. [Following an in depth conversation with the KS3 coordinator, and the 2ic, it was decided that maybe there wasn't enough red pen in the books. I know.] If there is a problem with my teaching, tell me how to fix it, otherwise I'm going to be wasting time trying to work out if I am indeed fixing said problem, or if I'm just making the same mistakes in a different colour.Adam Boxer talks about action steps here: The power of "by"
- Feedback should be useful/relevant. I've included both useful and relevant here because there is a lot of overlap between how the two play out. Feedback like "student handwriting is unclear" isn't really relevant to me. I don't teach handwriting. You came and watched me for a full 50 minutes and all you could take away from it was the fine motor skills of one student aren't up to par? Away with ya. "The Do Now retrieval questions at the beginning should be laid out in a grid, and labelled with how long ago students studied the content". Unless this is department policy, this is not useful. [It's also not a great policy - labelling questions with "we learned this last term" doesn't aid retrieval]
TL;DR
Ultimately, the purpose of observations and feedback is to improve us as teachers. This needs to be communicated effectively to everyone involved, and the feedback needs to be 1) specific, 2) actionable, and 3) relevant.
Ultimately, the purpose of observations and feedback is to improve us as teachers. This needs to be communicated effectively to everyone involved, and the feedback needs to be 1) specific, 2) actionable, and 3) relevant.
*technically it was a learning walk, but the principles apply.