Your Progress
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We have put together a number of resources that will help you to achieve your qualification. The qualification requires you to demonstrate some skills when it comes to observing others.
Your role is to observe teachers or trainers in practise to see how they apply the principles and techniques of their subject matter.
Observation should not be just a tick box. Observation is an integral part of quality assurance, teacher training and supporting staff. Without observing staff, standards could potentially slip. You might not notice the weakness and strengths of staff earlier enough. Developmental opportunities could also be missed. It is therefore imperative to value observations of staff as a way of finding and addressing needs.
Like all aspects of learning and development activities, observations should be planned and timed. Planning and timing assists with scheduling so that improvements can clearly be noted over a period of time. It will be difficult to fully evaluate the development of a candidate if all observations are done in quick succession.
You’ll need to do some careful planning, not only in regard to organising the observation sessions, but also in terms of working out what information you need to collect:
- prior to the session
- during the session, and
- at the end of the session
You will need to decide:
- what you are going to observe – because you cannot observe everything
- how you are going to collect and record the information; and
- how you will use this information in your two reports.
All this planning should occur before the observation sessions. I suggest you have a look at the candidates lesson plan to have an idea of what is going to be covered. It is sometimes critical for you to discuss prior what you will be looking out for as part of the observation.
You will need information about the teaching context that you will be observing, for example the:
- characteristics of the student group
- course and subject they are studying and where they havereached in the syllabus
- aims or learning outcomes of the sessions you will be observing
- training environment—is it face to face or flexible delivery, formal or informal?
As part of timing ensure you set aside plenty of time to effectively carry out the observation. It is also a good idea if possible to observe different sessions especially if the candidate teaches different levels. There should be time for providing feedback as soon as possible. Verbal developmental feedback might do in the first instance
A number of skills are required to effectively observe. This includes being professional, discreet, observant and having good admin skills. You should not undermine the observer and take over. Your role should be just as an observing instead of participant. You should also utilise your reflection skills and consider the potential influence of bias when making assessment decisions of the observation.
As with all work in the education profession, you will be expected to keep information about individuals within professional circles and confidential. Only those who need to know should be given information about an individual. It is easy to carry personal information outside of the professional circle – at which point it becomes gossip.
Good observers are holistic and should strive to look out for development opportunities to further stretch the observe. With time and experience a candidate might appear to do everything right and always getting perfect observations. Remember the teaching and training environment is not static. You might have to consider how they are getting on with any changes in practice, technology and legislation?
