Transcript Observations on Peer Observation

Observations on Peer
Observation
Sally Fincher
Discplinary Commons
7th April 2006
www.cs.kent.ac.uk
Our keenest observers
Any school-child playing “teacher” will reproduce most of
the behaviours used by most teachers.
Typical behaviours are:
• standing in the front of a group of relatively passive
onlookers (a position of authority),
• doing most of the talking (telling),
• asking questions to which they know the answers
(testing), and
• evaluating by passing judgements.
Yet, no research base indicates that these behaviours
have payoff in terms of learning, and much indicates
that they do not.
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Short Shameful Confessions
At this point, postcards were distributed and “confessions”
solicited (in the footsteps of talk.bizarre “short,
shameful confessions” or the PostSecret webpage
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/). The suggested
subject of the confessions was: Before the event,
what was your greatest fear about being observed?
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Observation can describe various categories of
behaviour
Affective – the emotional content of communication
Cognitive – the intellectual content of communication
Psychomotor – nonverbal behaviours, posture, body position, facial
expression & gestures
Activity – what is being done that relates a person to someone or
something else. (For example reading, or hitting)
Content – what is being talked about
Sociological Structure – the sociology of the interactive setting,
including who is talking to whom and in what roles
Physical environment – descriptions of the physical space in which
the observation is taking place, including materials and equipment
being used
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Observation can describe various categories of
behaviour: Two examples from the literature
Affective – the emotional content of communication
• See: Defensive climate in the computer science
classroom Lecia Jane Barker, Kathy Garvin-Doxas,
Michele Jackson , 2002
Sociological Structure – the sociology of the interactive
setting, including who is talking to whom and in what
roles
• See: Classical Ballet Structure and Practice Applied to
Engineering Class Sessions Blair London, 2004
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Reflective Pause
• What artefacts did your observation generate?
• Have you further processed them, or referred to them
subsequently?
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Uses for observation (i):
Development
Observation for expanding the repertoire of teaching
styles and providing teachers with data about how their
teaching style(s) match their intent.
Some dimensions of teaching:
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Participation – amount and kind
Cognitive level
Affective climate
Classroom control
Student-student interaction
Teacher role flexibility
Classroom methods
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Uses for observation (ii):
Supervision/Appraisal
Observations can change this role from rater to resource.
Can we become effective self-evaluators of our own
skills?
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Uses for observation (iii):
Specifying the conditions of learning.
Observation systems can be used for describing the
conditions needed to support any learning
environment. In order to specify knowing how rather
than knowing about as content, low-risk environments
must be provided.
To provide the necessary environment for such learning,
teachers must first be aware of, and in control of, their
own verbal and non-verbal communication to students
just as they control the subject matter. Second, they
must understand what “kinds of environment” tend to
foster or inhibit what effects in others.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence
References
• The content of this presentation was inspired by
Mirrors for Observation III: An anthology of observation
instruments edited by Anita Simon and E. Gil Boyer
Communications Materials Center, Pennsylvania USA,
1974
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