Three Approaches To Observation
1. There was often a much closer correspondence between the three sources of information on the goals of lessons taught by experienced teachers than by the inexperienced teachers. In other words, the experienced teachers were often more successful than the others in communicating their goals and intentions during a lesson. And when an inexperienced teacher observed an experienced teacher's lesson there was a higher degree of agreement as to what the goals of the lesson were. In the case of the inexperienced teachers, however, there was sometimes an apparent mismatch between what they set out to do in a lesson and what either the observer or the students thought the goals of a lesson were. This confirms Allwright's (1984) observation that learners' interpretations of lessons are often greatly different from teachers and Block's (1996) comment on "the existence of a gap between the way teachers and learners 'see' the classroom and all that occurs within it"(p. 168). In the present case this gap was greatest with the inexperienced teachers.
2. In the case of comments on the most successful part of lessons there were also differences between the views of the experienced and inexperienced teachers. The latter tended to comment on the things that worked best from their point of view as a teacher, i.e. they gave a teacher-based account of the highlights of the lesson. The former tended to focus more on the learners and what was likely to be of most benefit to them. For example one of the inexperienced teachers thought a spontaneous vocabulary activity was the most successful part of one of his lessons. Based on a student's question he had spent some time developing pairs of contrasting adjectives which led into a short oral drill. He thought he had handled this procedure very well. The teacher-observer however thought the best part of the lesson was a small group activity, in which he observed the learners engaged in genuine interaction around the task. The most useful outcome of the three-way observation activities was the fact that it enabled experienced teachers to serve as valued mentors to their less experienced colleagues.
Conclusions
Our understanding of the role of classroom observation in teacher education has changed in recent years as a result of a movement away from a technical view of teaching which focusses on identification of the behaviors and skills employed by effective teachers to a focus on the complex meanings underlying the observable acts of teaching. Reflective observation, that is, observation that is linked to critical reflection, is one strategy that can be used to help teachers develop a deeper understanding of themselves as teachers and so be better prepared to make decisions about their own teaching. As Dewey (1904)
observed, preparing teachers to be critically reflective about their practice may be more important in the long term than focusing on mastery of the techniques and skills that form the mainstay of much teacher education practice.
References
Allwright, D. (1984). Why don't learners learn what we teach? In D.M. Singleton and D.G. Little (Eds.). Language learning in formal and informal contexts. Dublin: IRAAL.
Block, D. (1966). A window on the classroom: classroom events viewed from different angles. In K. Bailey and D. Nunan (Eds.). Voices from the language classroom. (pp. 168-194). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dewey, J. (1904). The relation of theory to practice in education. In C.A. Murray (Ed.). The relation of theory to practice in the education of teachers. (Third Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education, Part I, pp. 9-30). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Richards, J.C. & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.
《Three Approaches To Observation》
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