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Showing posts from January, 2014

Lesson observation - Pondering a new direction...

I have had responsibility for learning and teaching for 4 years now.  Initially as a Director of Learning and now as an Assistant Headteacher.  One of my favourite parts of the job has always been observing staff because I love seeing how different people teach, I enjoy having conversations with teachers about teaching and the new ideas they want to try out.  But over the last few years (and I cannot pinpoint when it happened exactly), I began to realise that whilst I, as an observer, get a lot from the observation, for the person being observed it can be awful.  It provokes anxiety, worry and can create an increase in workload.  Teachers teach lessons that they believe will score them a 1 or a 2 because the number feels like the only thing that counts.  There is less variety in the lessons taught because people try to create a formula for success for fear of falling short of expectation and are less likely to take risks.  If you tell someone the snapshot of the lesson you saw was a 3