As
Ofsted faces yet more challenges over the validity of lesson
observations, teacher Ross Morrison McGill asks the profession how they
would like to develop
Do you think lesson observations should be scrapped? What model could replace them? Photograph: Alamy
If you've been swamped under your lesson plans, exams and
marking for too long, you might have missed the current insurgency
taking place around lesson observations.
Back in March, the thinktank Policy exchange recommended
Ofsted abandon its "unreliable and invalid" methods of observing classroom lessons
during school inspections. More recently, Sam Freedman, a former policy
adviser who is now head of research at Teach First, also argued that
lesson observations should be scrapped. Even the updated
Ofsted guidance from February 2014 repeated that inspectors must not give the impression that Ofsted favours a
teaching style.
The
catch-22 with lesson observations is that they're formulated for
several purposes – appraisal policy, peer-to-peer development and for
monitoring sub-standards of teaching – using the Ofsted criteria. Where
we have all gone wrong, is that we have adapted this whole-school
framework for individual one-off lesson judgements, which has created a
culture of judging teachers and has fixated the profession on defining
ourselves by a grade.
A second issue is that to observe precisely
and offer sophisticated feedback for improvement, requires a certain
level of experience and proficiency. We can all observe lessons and
state that the lesson was "good", but without clear cognition, it is
tricky to define what actually constitutes "good teaching". This can
make judgements very abstract and those observing often turn to dialogue
and additional sources of evidence provided after the lesson itself.
These other sources of information then become the criteria for us to
make judgements more accurately.
Professor Rob Coe of Durham
University, recently presented two key issues for observers. The first
concerns reliability and "the extent to which the judgements made
independently by two observers who see the same lesson would agree". The
seconds is validity – "if you get a high rating, does it mean you are
an effective teacher?"
He presents information in
Measures of Effective Teaching (MET),
a research partnership that analyses five critical research areas to
train people to become qualified observers and make judgements. These
areas are: student achievement, classroom observations, teachers'
pedagogical content knowledge, student perceptions and the teachers'
perceptions. He asks: "The belief that we know good teaching when we see
it is so strong that it is a real challenge to be told that research
does not support it."
But I believe one can observe learning. It
may be difficult to measure this visually, but I do not believe it is
invisible, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Over the past
three years at my school, we've worked with staff to improve the
reliability and validity of lesson judgements. What we have found to
work very well is being flexible with appraisal and formal observations.
As long as learning is happening – teachers having teaching and
learning dialogue – then we can start to focus on what is most important
– sophisticated, precise feedback for improving the teacher and the
learning.
We'll also be revisiting our training model so that all
staff are empowered to give accurate feedback, have difficult
conversations and focus much more on improving rather than box-ticking.
Within this, we are debating whether or not to keep judging lessons at
all.
Plenty of blogs from
schools
and headteachers state the benefits of scrapping lesson judgements. But
it will take a generation for lesson judgements to be removed, and in
the meantime, I'd like to see observations containing much more emphasis
on peer-dialogue and much less focus on criterion-referenced
judgements. More teacher-owned data must to be taken into account, as
well as student conversations and evidence in books – such as marking,
homework and re-drafting work. This would provide a much fairer system
for the profession, in making a more reliable and valid assessment of
the teaching.
An observer also needs experience in the classroom.
Teacher dialogue is crucial if observers are to provide unbiased and
pinpointed feedback for them; the lack of sophisticated, observational
feedback, is much worse than a culture of judging teaching. Maybe it is
time we move away from judgements and ask ourselves how would we like to
be observed and challenged to develop? If you were a headteacher, what
would you do in your school if you knew who was a good/poor teacher? How
would you help them improve without a judgement? The comments thread is
open for your thoughts and ideas.
Ross Morrison McGill is an award winning teacher and assistant headteacher. He is author of 100 Ideas: Outstanding Lessons. You can follow him on Twitter @TeacherToolkit or read his blog here.
