This is the 5^th and last blog in a series on instructional coaching.

Instructional coaching includes a highly diverse set of activities to support teachers. But at its core lies classroom observation with feedback.

Indeed, for many donor-funded coaching programs, observation forms the totality of their coaching programs. (To be clear, in this post “classroom observations” and “observation and feedback” are synonymous.)

The process involves a formal or informal observation of a teacher’s classroom practice by a peer, coach or some other person for purposes of improving a specific or general aspect of teacher practice.

The theory of change of classroom observations is intuitive enough: Teaching is an isolated profession, typically taking place in the presence of no other adults. Thus, having "another set of eyes" gives a teacher a different view of his/her performance.

The above can be true, except when it isn’t. For many teachers across multiple countries whom I have been interviewing over the last several years, classroom observations are often meaningless exercises devoid of utility. To be clear: teachers think they can be valuable; it’s just that for many, observations in their current form are not valuable.

So, why is this?

The biggest reason appears to be that teachers often don’t trust the purpose, the people and the process around observations. Given the centrality of observations to coaching, this blog post focuses on the components of classroom observations, discusses the ways they may threaten the very intentions of coaching and how we might rethink the who, how and why of classroom observations.

Purpose of observation

Purpose is the rationale and motivation for observing. It’s the why. Why are we conducting classroom observations? Is it for informational purposes? For improvement? For evaluation? Is it for accountability? The answer in many donor-funded programs is often: “Yes—all of these.” This is a problem.

The purpose of coaching is to help teachers attain a goal or improve practice and in so doing develop a sense of agency. To do so, teachers make themselves vulnerable, allowing a coach into their class to observe their struggles so they can address what is not working. Confidentiality and collaborating to identify strategies to improve the teacher’s performance can deepen that trusting relationship.

Piggybacking onto these support-based observations by using information gathered for purposes of evaluation, reporting and accountability distorts the coaching relationship.

It erodes the trust that is foundational to a coaching program; it undermines the confidentiality that is central to a coach-teacher relationship; it contorts the coach’s role from one of support to one of inspection, supervision, evaluation and accountability agent.

Classroom observation data used for other purposes besides teacher improvement—for accountability, evaluation, formal appraisal— can impact the teacher’s ability to be promoted or get a pay raise. It reduces coaching to fidelity of implementation rather than promoting greater teacher agency.

The first step in making the classroom observation process more effective for teachers is understanding the purpose and the danger of blurring purposes—identifying what matters most; knowing why we are doing an observation; and what teachers can gain, and lose, as a result.

People: teachers and observers

The most critical actors in the observation process are the observer and the teachers being observed. One has a great deal of power; the other has very little.

The observer may be another teacher—but that is not usually the case. This fact alone affects the credibility of observations (certainly with teachers with whom I’ve talked). The observer might be someone who has extensive teaching experience but has not been well-prepared in conducting observations (this is also common).

Thus, a teacher’s value or worth may be determined by someone who has never taught and/or who has not been carefully selected, prepared, and supported. This negatively impacts the credibility and the validity of observation data.

Then there are the teachers. For most teachers across the globe, classroom observations are done to them not with them. They have limited voice or choice in the process. They may not understand it. If they raise these concerns, they are branded “resistors.”

Some never see the data gathered on them even though, as noted above, it can affect their salary, the professional judgments made about their status, their careers.

This second element of the observation process must thus focus on carefully selecting, preparing and supporting observers (coaches and otherwise). It means wherever possible selecting teachers, not bureaucrats or implementing agency staff, to conduct peer evaluations and help them understand the spirit and letter of observations.

Protocols: classroom observation tools

Protocols here comprise two elements. The first are instruments and documents used in the observation process. Most observations occur with a classroom observation protocol or tool— such as a checklist or a rubric type that examines gradations of quality.

Programs may do this differently—some use well-respected and reliable observation tools like the CLASS. Others develop their own instruments (some with reliability testing; others not).

Some programs share these observation tools and instruments with teachers; others do not. From what I have seen, most programs teach observers how to use the observation instrument, but they often do not ensure inter-rater reliability (confirming that every observer is able to differentiate between a 4 and a 5 or a “sometimes” and “always”).

Nor may they guarantee that every observer understands the elements of excellent implementation or teach observers how to write observation summaries that are descriptive and evidence-based versus inferential and judgmental.

Protocols: procedures

The second element and meaning of protocol is the procedure or system of rules that govern all observation-related activities. This can include steps in the observation process (pre-and post-conversations); scripts and scaffolds to guide observer and teacher conversation; the in-class observation (where do observers sit? how long do they observe?); what is the system for collecting, analyzing and reporting observation data? Do teachers know how data will be used?

Essentially, do all parties know exactly what to do and how to do it? Are all elements of the observation process aligned? The problem is that for many classroom observations there are no protocols—observers are left to say and do what they believe is best.

Thus, the data gathered, and inferences developed may result more from faulty instrumentation and ad hoc procedures than actual teacher performance.

Process of observations

Process overlaps with protocols but essentially describes the unfolding and sequencing of observation events. It is how observations occur— what happens? How? When exactly during the school year do they occur? What happens, before, during and after an observation?

The process of evaluation requires considerable attention for two reasons.

First, because observation is empirical, the observer may believe that what he/she sees is unalloyed truth. Yet observations are a snapshot in time and a teacher can be having a bad or good day—an observer can be having a good or bad day—and this impacts the observation.

More critical are the inherent biases associated with the observation process. Confirmation bias (interpreting evidence as confirmation of one's system of beliefs or values); the halo effect (our positive impressions of someone affect how we rate their performance); the observer effect (the possibility that the act of observation affects what is being observed); change blindness (the failure to detect visual changes); inattentional blindness (the failure to detect a behavior because we don’t expect to see it or we’re not paying attention) all distort what we believe to be reality.

Next, post-observations involve feedback on teacher performance. And feedback, though regarded with near reverence by all of us, is far from a silver bullet. It is weakly related to performance and often regarded as unhelpful by the person receiving it.

Many programs focus so much on how to give feedback versus what to say that it may provoke derision from teachers: “First they tell you the good stuff; then they tell you the bad stuff. Somewhere in between is reality” a group of teachers laughingly told me in an interview a few months ago.

Feedback tends to be focused on past behaviors versus forward looking. Yet for it to be helpful, it needs to be developmental (focusing on forward-looking actionable steps teachers can take to improve performance) versus evaluative; it must come from a credible source, based on information gathered from a credible process, and the person receiving feedback must be genuinely interested in improvement (versus promotion or compliance). Thus, as discussed above, many classroom observations in their present form negate these conditions.

Conclusion

We’ve long approached classroom observations as beneficial in and of themselves, as completely empirical, as technically simple and straightforward, with feedback the key that unlocks improvement.

The reality is far more complex. To make classroom observations a process that all teachers value and trust, we can begin to address many of the challenge areas of observations mentioned here.

Above all, we can flip the power dynamic, by making them a teacher-led, formative, support-based interaction between knowledgeable professionals in an open, transparent process guided by the aim of improvement.

---------

Read the other blogs in this series:

• Getting started with teacher coaching in international education programs
• Instructional coaching’s magical thinking problem - or 8 threats to coaching
• Can virtual coaching be an effective substitute for in-person coaching?
• The traps of donor-funded coaching … and what to do about them

Reference

• Blunden, H., Yoon, J., Kristal, A., & Whillans, A. (2019). Soliciting advice rather than feedback yields more developmental, critical, and actionable input. Unpublished results. Retrieved from Harvard Business School Working Paper 20-021.