Classroom observation

Some comments J.Scheerens

INVALSI conference 2015

INVALSI, UTOP, Eff. Research 1 Strategie didattiche insegnamento strutturato Tecniche di interrogazione e discussione- Strategie per sostenere l’apprendimento Monitoraggio e valutazione 2. Gestione della classe Gestione del tempo Gestione delle regole e dei comportamenti 3. Sostegno, guida e supporto . Insegnamento adattato ai diversi bisogni degli studenti Attenzione agli studenti con BES 4. Clima di Apprendimento Coinvolgimento degli studenti Rapporti in classe

1 Lesson Structure - Well structured - Important content - Gauging student

understanding - Use of resources 2 Classroom Environment - Engagement - Interactions - On-task 3 Implementation - Questioning - Involving students - Timing 4 Mathematics/Science - Content significance

Structure and classroom management - Opportunity to learn - Available time - Goal oriented assessment Supportive classroom climate - Pro-active and supportive classrooms - Caring communities - Appropriate expectations Cognitive activation Coherent content Sufficient depth Thoughtful discourse Scaffolding students’ ideas

Observation categories Dutch

Inspectorate of Education

Opportunity to learn Learning time Supportive climate Challenging climate Structured teaching Activating students Teaching learning strategies Classroom organization Adaptive teaching

MET study, USA (Gates)

DESIGNING TEACHER EVALUATION SYSTEMS New Guidance from the Measures of EffectiveTeaching Project THOMAS J. KANE, KERRI A. KERR, ROBERT C. PIANTA (EDITORS) Jossey Bass Publishers

Predictive validity of observations • “They calculated that it would take 5+ separate

observations of each teacher to get to a .6 reliability on the teacher behavior instruments, and virtually no one is going to do 5+ observations on each teacher in a study. More problematically, as Ben pointed out AND I AGREE, who would base anything even remotely moderate-stakes on an analysis that could account for 36% of the variance (after five-plus observations)? As a practical matter, Ben tells me that for the typical teacher, this would mean that while you could get a “score” at, say, the 90th percentile, if you posited the need to be correct +/- 2 standard deviations, then the 90th% teacher’s true score would be estimated to be between -110% and +390%. In other words, useless”.

(Conversation with Prof. Sam Stringfield)

Classroom Assessment Scoring System

• CLASS provides an overall assessment of a teacher’s instructional interactions, which is the product of a teacher’s scores on the three broad CLASS domains: Emotional Support, Instructional Support, and Classroom Organization. Each of these domains, in turn, encompasses a set of finer-grained assessments of particular dimensions of interactions in that domain.

• The Emotional Support domain includes Positive Climate, Teacher Sensitivity, and Regard for Student Perspectives. The Classroom Organization domain includes Behavior Management, Productivity, and Negative Climate. The Instructional Support domain includes Instructional Learning Formats, Content Understanding, Analysis and Inquiry, Quality of Feedback, and Instructional Dialogue

CLASS overview • CLASS Observations –by domainEmotional Support • Teacher praises students (“Ya’ll did such an excellent job pure thinking”, “I love the way Brandy is tracking”, “You all are the

thinkers in the room”) (Positive Climate) • Teacher uses students’names (Positive Climate) • Teacher walks around the classroom and checks in with students (Teacher Sensitivity) • Teacher encourages students to work in groups (Regard for Student Perspectives) • Teacher has students share ideas for what the equation is and records these on the board (Regard for Student Perspectives) • • Classroom Organization • Teacher gives students a time cue (“I’m going to give you two minutes”) (Productivity) • Teacher sets objective (“You have two minutes to come up with an equation you would write”) (Instructional Learning

Formats) • There is little to no student misbehavior (Behavior Management) • • Instructional Support • Teacher links to prior learning (“Now that you know the definition from geometry..”) (Content Understanding) • Teacher gives students the chance to problem-solve by creating an equation to match the missing angle (Analysis and

Problem Solving) • Teacher prompts student to explain how they arrived at an answer (“Can you explain how you got this?”)(Quality of

Feedback) • Teacher prompts students through feedback (“What do you think you should do next?”, “What’s your equation?”, “How can

you show that might be right?”) (Quality of Feedback) • Teacher and student engage in a feedback loop at the end of the clip (Quality of Feedback) • Students discuss content (Instructional Dialogue) •

UTOP observation instrument

• Classroom environment • Lesson Structure • Implementation • Mathematics/Science Content http://utop.uteach.utexas.edu/

From diagnostic measurement to improvement

• MTP (My Teaching Partner) offers teachers ongoing, personalized coaching and feedback aligned with a validated set of observable teacher behaviors that are associated with increases in student achievement. MTP was designed using the CLASS as the measure of effective teacher-student interactions.

Points of attention

• The predictive validity of teaching observations with respect to student outcomes (how many times a teacher needs to be observed to obtain reasonable reliability)

• Various ways to scale teacher “scores” • How to find “appropriate actions” given certain

diagnoses • Shaping the context of application: purpose,

information, time involvement, administration etc.