THE ROLE OF CLASSROOM OBSERVATION IN TEACHING

FUTURE TEACHERS: A CASE STUDY

Mihaela Badea
university assistant
Petroleum Gas University of Ploiesti

INTRODUCTION

Most theoretical models of teachers’ educations seek to transfer a

predetermined, body of knowledge from the teacher educator to the future teacher.
This is not a new approach entailing a master-pupil relationship in which the
student-teacher is expected to learn some of the master teacher’s pedagogic
knowledge and skills. The present study focuses on the relationship between the
student-teacher and the ELT Methodology teacher, whose main aim is to teach
future students how to teach.

CLASSROOM OBSERVATION

According to Allwright [1], any system of classroom observation must

recognize the possibility of multiple perspectives on a classroom event. There can
be at least three different perspectives: the teacher perspective, the learner
perspective, and the observer perspective. Most traditional models of classroom
observation have been unidirectional, that is, the information flow is generally from
the observer to the teacher, the observer being a supervisor in the case of a
practising teacher, or a teacher educator in the case of a teacher-trainee. The
traditional models have also been unidimensional, that is, the basis of observation is
largely confined to one single perspective, that of the observer. These models only
put an emphasis on the observer’s perception. In my opinion, such an emphasis is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for a full understanding of classroom
events. Classroom observation that focuses on any one perspective, and neglect the
other two, usually provides only a distorted view of the classroom event. An
understanding of all three perspectives – teacher, learner and observer – is
indispensable to a critical analysing and understanding of classroom events.
The emphasis on teacher perspective ensures self-monitoring and self-
evaluation on the part of the teacher. It gives an opportunity for teachers to analyse
their own classroom discourse, such a constant and continual reflection resulting in
a heightened awareness of one’s own teaching behaviour.
The emphasis on learner perspective has an important role for the learner in
the process of becoming a future teacher. As primary consumers of instruction,
learners can bring a unique perspective to the classroom event. As interested and
involved members of the classroom community, they are best suited to explain and
examine several aspects of classroom discourse including self-evaluation measures,
learning strategies, the clarity of instructional guidance given by the teacher to help
them achieve their goal(s); and their attitude towards the nature and scope of
classroom activities in general.
 The emphasis on observer perspective ensures a third and welcome
perspective from an informed and inquisitive observer. It also enables collaboration
among colleagues in the way shown by modern classroom management techniques.
That is, working together, colleagues create a conducive atmosphere where
teamwork is encouraged, and where they help each other improve both the work
environment and their own teaching performance.
To make critical classroom observation viable and useful, teachers, observers
and learners have to function jointly as partners in striving to understand and assess
the discourse of a particular lesson. These partners, by virtue of their prior
experience and exposure, bring with them their own perceptions and prescriptions
about what constitutes teaching, what constitutes learning, and what constitutes
learning outcome. Therefore, one and the same classroom event can be, and very
often is, interpreted differently by different participants in that event. In such a
context, a critical classroom observation, in my view, must essentially encompass a
systematic observation of teaching acts as well as learning acts, and must create an
awareness of the teacher perception as well as the learner perception of what did or
did not happen in the class.

THE PROCEDURE FOR OBSERVATION

The objectives of critical classroom observation are realized through a cyclical,

three-tier process:
- pre-observation, in which the main observer and the student teacher consult
with each other regarding the aims, objectives and activities of the class to be
monitored;
- observation itself;
- post-observation, in which the main observer, the student teacher and the other
students, as well future teachers, analyse classroom interaction, select a few
episodes for detailed treatment, discuss pedagogic implications, and then try to
theorise from practice.
These stages involve several steps:
Step 1: The observer administers a one-page questionnaire in order to elicit from the
teacher information about (a) the specific objectives of that class; (b) how the
teacher proposes to achieve those objectives; (c) the students’ level of preparedness,
motivation and participation.
Step 2: Based on the response to the questionnaire, the observer seeks necessary
clarification.
Step 3: The observer studies the instructional material(s) to be used in class.
Step 4: The observer observes the teaching of one unit of lessons. The observer
takes notes on some interactional episodes to be explored further (both strong and
weak points of the lesson).
Step 5: Based on the notes, the observer and the teacher discuss and decide to select
a few interactional episodes and, if necessary, transcribe those segments where the
episode occur.
Step 6: The observer and the teacher meet with a group of learners who figured in
the episodes selected for analysis, and talk about those interactional episodes.
Step 7: The observer and the teacher meet a post-observation analysis, and discuss
the already analysed interactional episodes and exchange their perspectives.
Step 8: They pull together all three perspectives (teacher, learner, observer), and
discuss the classroom events.
Step 9: Finally, they try to interpret what they have observed in order to construct
their own personal theory and to further refine their teaching practice.

THE STUDY

By way of illustrating the role of classroom observation, the partial results of a

questionnaire are shown below. The people involved in the study are foreign
languages students, most of them future English teachers in primary and secondary
schools and, of course, the ELT Methodology teacher, whom I have called above
the main observer. The ELT Methodology seminar consists in the teaching of a
lesson; so, each student has the opportunity of having all the three perspectives
discussed above, as they are supposed to teach a lesson at their own choice. During
the lesson his/her mates are actually the students and the real teacher is only the
observer. I previously mentioned the fact that the student is given the opportunity of
having three perspectives: teacher, learner and observer, as each of them has to act
as if he/she were the real teacher, they are also the learners and they also critically
and objectively observe their mates’ lesson.
My research instrument for finding out teachers’ and learners’ attitudes
towards error correction was the questionnaire. In constructing my questionnaires
my sources were David Nunan’s books ‘Language Teaching Methodology. A
Textbook for Teachers’ (1991) and ‘Research Methods in Language Learning’
(1995).The questionnaire is a research instrument which involves asking questions
of other people and it is classified as ‘introspective’, since it involves respondents
reporting on themselves, their views, their beliefs and so on. According to Nunan
[2] ‘introspection is the process of observing and reflecting on one’s thoughts,
feelings, motives, reasoning processes, and mental states with a view to determining
the ways in which these processes and states determine our behaviour’. Very often
the questionnaire is answered by reading the questions and then ticking responses,
or by writing in short answers. Thus, it is easier for the researcher to deal with the
data collected and this is one of the reasons I chose it.
Questionnaire items can be relatively closed or open ended. A closed item is
one in which the range of possible responses is determined by the researcher. In
contrast, an open item is one in which the subject can decide what to say and how to
say it. Questionnaires can consist entirely of closed questions, entirely of open
questions, or a mixture of closed and open questions.
The advantage of closed questions is that they usually make the questionnaire
easier and quicker to fill in. they also make for quicker and more reliable scoring of
the responses. The disadvantages of the closed questions are that they usually take
longer to devise than open questions. Instructions on how to answer them have to be
very clear. This means that the questionnaire designer has to anticipate all or most
of the possible answers, so there may be little unexpected information in the
responses.
 One corresponding advantage of open questions is that they are comparatively
easy to design, but one may have some difficulties in trying to score and analyse the
responses. It is also likely that responses to open questions reflect what the
respondent wants to say.
The primary objective of this part of the study is assess the extent to which
classroom observation can help future teachers in order to ultimately theorise from
their own practice. The respondents were 25 students who were all supposed to
teach at least one English lesson to their mates, who acted as their students.
The research questions were the following:
1. What is the role of classroom observation in your future development as
future teachers? Do you consider it to be a good or a bad thing? Give reasons for
your choice.
2. How do you feel when being observed by your mates?
3. How do you feel when being observed by your teacher?
The purpose of the first question was to find out whether the students really
consider classroom observation as being useful in their development as future
students, if it gives them the opportunity of learning from their own mistakes and if
it is a useful way of improving their teaching techniques.
The purpose of the second question was to find out how my students felt while
acting as real teachers as I have noticed that some of them, even if they are quite
good students, felt very nervous when finding themselves in front of their mates,
seeing them as observers, hunting for their mistakes, instead of considering them as
pupils.
And, finally, the purpose of the last question was to find out how they felt
when being observed by me, the real teacher, as I have noticed the same tendency as
the one mentioned above.

DATA ANALYSIS

I have administered the questions to 25 students studying English as their

major subject and who regularly attend the ELT Methodology classes as most of
them want to become English teachers, especially in primary and secondary
schools. It is worth mentioning the fact that some of them, even if they are students,
work as English teachers in some nurseries, so teaching is not something new for
them. The collected data are analysed from two perspectives: the quantitative one
and the qualitative one, in my opinion the latter being more significant for the
purpose of the present study.

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

As the number of students was quite small, it was very simple to analyse their
answers quantitatively. The only problem was the fact that I have chosen open
questions and it was a little bit difficult to score them. However, the results were the
following:
Question 1 – Twenty two students consider classroom observation a good
thing, helping them a lot in their future careers, one student did not answer correctly
to the question, maybe because he/she did not understand the question (he/she just
mentioned some things about the relationship between the teacher and the students
and the fact that the teachers should be very good observers; taken into account
his/her remarks I considered the answer as being irrelevant), two students did not
answer the question at all and only one student considered classroom observation a
bad thing, as , ‘when you are supposed to teach you might feel bad if you hear
observations about your teaching from your colleagues and from your teacher and
you can learn teaching by simply doing it, there is no need for somebody to tell you
how to do it’.
Question 2 – Nine of the students answered that they feel nervous when being
observed by their mates, three said that they do not feel good, three other students
that they feel quite strange, one student mentioned the fact that he/she feels
insecure, one that he/she feels embarrassed and, quite surprisingly, six students
answered that they have no problem and they feel OK when being observed by the
mates. Two of the students did not answer the question.
Question 3 – Regarding their feelings when being observed by the teacher, the
students answers were the following: eleven admitted they feel nervous, five – quite
strange, one – insecure, one – embarrassed, one said that this gives him a sense of
responsibility, two – have no problem when being observed, one said that he
actually does not care whether or not he is being observed while teaching and two
of the students did not answer the question.

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Almost all the students consider classroom observation a very useful technique
in their development as future teachers as it gives them the opportunity to improve
their skills as teachers, as well as future teacher trainers. Even if most of them feel
nervous when being observed, either by the teacher or by their mates, they seem to
have understood its importance in teaching how to teach better. They also consider
it a way of forming your own teaching style as, they say, you get used to teaching
before being involved in a real classroom situation and they know how to organize
and plan their future lessons. They even think that discussing with their mates and
their teacher about what was good or bad during a lesson they develop a good sense
of objectivism which might be very useful in their future careers.
Regarding the observer, I was not surprised to find out the fact that even when
being observed by their own mates most of the students feel nervous, because, as
they mentioned, they do not know what their mates expect from them and they are
also afraid of not making mistakes they may be embarrassed by. Only some of the
students admitted that they have no problem when being observed by their mates,
they even feel quite comfortable with this and they are more confident in
themselves. Actually, I have to admit that the situation is not really the perfect one,
as they might feel embarrassed or ashamed if the lesson is not as good as expected
because they know their mates. On the other hand, and they also mentioned it, they
feel much better when being observed by somebody that they know already.
The answers to the third question were almost similar to the second one. Even
if most of the students admitted that they are quite nervous when being observed by
the teacher they mentioned the fact that they really like being watched by somebody
who knows more than they do and who can give them valuable information about
teaching. What really surprised me was the fact that there are also students who
have no problems with being observed while acting as real teachers and I have to
mention the fact that the lessons that they have taught were very good ones.

CONCLUSIONS

The above should have demonstrated that a combination of teacher, learner

and observer perspectives helped the teacher and the observer understand the
significant role of classroom observation in the development of future teachers.
They were able to sensitize themselves to various perspectives on classroom aims
and events, thus opening up new vistas for their approach to classroom learning and
teaching.
If teacher educators create the conditions necessary for teachers to engage in
research as a valued and valuable professional activity, then teachers will eventually
become teacher-scholars. The challenge, as Allwright (1993:131) points out, is how
to help teachers fully integrate their normal pedagogic practices with the research
perspective, ‘without adding significantly and unacceptably to teachers’ workloads,
so as to contribute both to professional development and to theory-building within
and across the profession’.

References
[1] ALLWRIGHT, D.: Observation in Language Classroom, London:
Longman, 1988
[2] NUNAN, D.: Research Methods in Language Learning, Cambridge
University Press, 1995, p. 115