[MUSIC] Welcome Week 6, continuing to develop as a professional. In this lecture we'll explore the issue of gaining and utilising feedback from others. We've talked about individual reflection and assessment in goal setting. But in many cases today, we're seeing the benefits of collaborative reflection. Increasingly, as we've seen with professional learning, teachers are working as members of collegial, collaborative teams rather than as individuals. These professional discussions can take the form of learning cycles, which we've examined previously, to address issues of importance in the schools. We know that feedback from teachers to students is important and has a large effect size of 0.73 according to Hattie's work. You may not be aware that providing teachers with formative feedback on their performance, on a regular basis has an even larger effect size of 0.9. Earlier we said that students need answers to four questions. What can I do? What can't I do? How does my work compare with that of others? And how can I do better? But teachers need answers to the same four questions. And as with students, the question or the issue that has the most effect on student learning is number four. One of the ways we give teachers feedback, is through classroom observations. But this should be only part of the picture. There are some problems with classroom observations. The first of these is that often there's no preparation or training for the person who is doing the observation. The observation itself may be unfocused, relying simply on impressions. He looks like a good teacher. She taught a very poor lesson in that particular case. On the other hand, we may have classroom observation techniques, which are too detailed, with too many variables, which are overly complex. And long lists of check lists and rubrics can actually work against professional development. I've mentioned before that the issue of the training of the observer is very, very important. But we also need to think about the purpose of the classroom observation. Is it about making a judgement on a teachers performance at a particular time for the purpose of gaining registration or certification or keeping their job? Or is it about development? The purpose of the observation will determine the type of observation techniques we use and what we focus on. The final problem with classroom observations is frequently there's a lack of constructive feedback. The worst case examples at the moment are when a supervisor comes into a classroom with an iPad, with a rubric, several criteria, A to E, these are ticked or checked, these are then emailed to the teacher with no construction feedback. On the other hand, feedback which is purposeful, focused developmental, just as we've seen with students, has the potential to improve teaching. I have provided for you an example of a rubric developed to assist in classroom observations. However this is an example of overly atomizing teaching, or breaking it up into too many component parts. In the case of this particular Rubric, there are six domains of teacher performance. Each of these has 10 aspects. We now have 60 possible elements that we can make a rating on. Each of these elements can be rated according to a 4 point scale. Thus, in terms of the number of possibilities, we could have 240 possibilities in terms of rating that teacher's performance in the space of one lesson. This is a very good example of making the process overly complex. So, what do we need? When we're focusing on judging teachers' performance, rubrics can be useful. But when we're focusing on improving performance, more focused observation and feedback is preferable. Charlotte Danielson has done a lot of work in the area of appraising teacher effectiveness, and I've provided for you a YouTube entitled making teacher evaluations meaningful. In observing the YouTube video, I suggest you think about the answers to these questions. Why is it important to assess teacher effectiveness? How and why have our approaches changed to judging teaching performance? What's the role of rigor? In other words how complicated the process is. What's the importance of the issue of stakes? For example, high stakes versus low stakes judgements? Why is it important to define effective teaching before we start making judgements about it? And what does an authentic system for the teacher evaluation actually require? Charlotte Danielson in her approach defines four domains of teaching practice. The first domain is around planning and preparation for teaching and learning. The second is about classroom environment. The third is about the actual instruction or the strategies employed by the teacher, and the fourth is about meeting professional responsibilities. Within these, structured observations and helpful feedback can be made to teachers without either atomizing teaching or simply relying on impressions which are unhelpful. Lee Shulman provides a quotation for us there about the complexity of teaching, which is well worth tacking on board. [MUSIC] A final approach to the issue of teacher appraisal or assessment is the use of what's called instructional rounds, and I've given you an example here from Richard Elmore, as well as a website where you can actually see what's involved. But quite simply, this is borrowed from the medical field, whereby an experienced medico goes around the wards examining patients and talking to them with a small group of accompanying professionals. This technique has been becoming very popular in education, but a number of things are important. One is the fact that the observations need to be focused and need to be diagnostic. They need to be collegial and collaborative and not judgmental. In this way, professionals can engage in a focused discussion about what they're observing in classrooms based upon a particular item of interest, which might be, for example, teacher questioning, or student involvement in a particular activity. But once again, it's important the teacher concerned receives feedback and that that feedback is constructive. In our next session, we'll look at the important issue of formulating a personal, professional development plan. [MUSIC]
