Making the invisible visible: The problem with the one-off observation

‘People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for’ To Kill a Mockingbird

Lesson observations are highly problematic; for the stress they induce in teachers and for the limited returns they provide in assessing the quality of teaching in schools. As an inexperienced teacher there have been times when I’ve spent hours over planning lesson plans for observations, trying to do something jazzy or spectacular or trying to prejudge what that particular observer will want to see. The resulting lessons may have ‘looked good’ within that hour snapshot or failed miserably because they were not reflective of my teaching. We also all know that teacher that can pull out the ‘outstanding observation lesson’ whilst their day to day practice is lack lustre. What does an observer really learn from such a process? Ultimately they have not learned the true picture of their staff and therefore the process fails to address what should be the real purpose of such an endeavour; to adequately access the strengths and weakness of a department so best practice can be shared and teaching and pupil outcomes can improve.

Furthermore, the problem with the hour lesson observation is that it is merely an arbitrary snapshot within a wide scheme of learning that has happened over the course of weeks, if not months. Whilst I’m sure some schools use this process as a genuine dialogue where the context of learning can be explained by the teacher being observed, my experience is any ‘dialogue’ afterwards does not go much further than the classic ‘so how do you think that went?’ where the answer does nothing to change the grade which has been already decided by the observer. This leads to the inevitable fear, distrust, frustration and anxiety that are all too often tied into the observation process. Thankfully, it seems that more and more schools are ditching grading and making the observation process more informal and reflective but much more needs to be done to get to a place where performance management is less about compliance and auditing and more about growth and improvement.

Learning is often invisible to the naked eye and individual lessons don’t necessarily give a true picture of the groundwork that has gone into what can be observed at that particular moment. This felt very apparent in lesson I taught last week…

I am a very boring teacher. I mean this in the sense that I have deliberately ditched a lot of the faddy ‘engaging’ activities that were the mainstay of my NQT years. This is mainly because I very much believe that if there are two ways to teach something, we should prioritise the one that is the most efficient. Routines are very important to me. I don’t mean in the sense of behaviour (but that is also true) but I try to keep lessons in the same format so that the learning is the focus, not the activity. Therefore, come into my lesson and you are likely to see the following:

•         I begin with a starter that introduces a ‘big question’ or recap previous learning if appropriate
•        I will then introduce the main task/ success criteria
•        Then we will read the text together, pupils will then annotate it independently or in pairs
•        We feedback and check for misconceptions
•      I then model the beginning of the answer on the board (using questions to get input from the pupils) explaining how the answer is meeting the success criteria.
•       They then work in silence for around 20mins
•      We self assess using the success criteria (I model this by doing one under the visualiser)

A huge proportion of my lessons follow this same procedure. If you are an observer who doesn’t like teacher talk or wants to see group work- you are looking at an inadequate lesson. Yet, through my experience and research I believe this works- it’s the most efficient way for pupils to learn and allows time for deeper understanding of texts through the questioning I can lead and direct.

So, this week I thought I would try something different. Instead of modelling the answer on the board, I sat down at the back of the lesson and handed my pen to one of the pupils and said ‘I want you to be the teacher for this bit’. The pupil got up and went to the board and asked just the questions I would have asked, prompting the other pupils, taking different responses and then evaluating which was the best to one to then write on the board as part of the answer. Now, I sometimes had to nudge them in the right direction but they pretty much produced a brilliant model answer, using the exact process I would have. Sitting at the back of the classroom, I was struck how a casual observer to this lesson would see so many ‘outstanding’ things: pupils taking responsibility for their own learning, demonstrating metacognition, working together, evaluating ideas, being kind and supportive to each other’s opinions. Yet, this lesson would not have been possible a month ago, it is only because of all those lessons of that embedded those routines and explicit explanation of the mental process that this lesson was possible. In that lesson, the success of that much maligned ‘didactic’ teaching was invisible.

I use this anecdotal example as I think it neatly shows how one lesson can never fully show the snapshot of teaching or learning that is going on in a classroom. For an observer much of what is and has been happening (particularly if done well) is invisible, therefore it is vitally important for the ongoing improvement of teaching and learning within a school that teachers are empowered to be part of the observation dialogue, to be able to explain, contextualise and reflect during the observation process.

We need to be able to make the invisible visible.