It erodes the trust that is foundational to a coaching program it undermines the confidentiality that is central to a coach-teacher relationship it contorts the coach’s role from one of support to one of inspection, supervision, evaluation and accountability agent.Ĭlassroom observation data used for other purposes besides teacher improvement-for accountability, evaluation, formal appraisal- can impact the teacher’s ability to be promoted or get a pay raise. Piggybacking onto these support-based observations by using information gathered for purposes of evaluation, reporting and accountability distorts the coaching relationship. Confidentiality and collaborating to identify strategies to improve the teacher’s performance can deepen that trusting relationship. To do so, teachers make themselves vulnerable, allowing a coach into their class to observe their struggles so they can address what is not working. The purpose of coaching is to help teachers attain a goal or improve practice and in so doing develop a sense of agency. Why are we conducting classroom observations? Is it for informational purposes? For improvement? For evaluation? Is it for accountability? The answer in many donor-funded programs is often: “Yes-all of these.” This is a problem. Purpose is the rationale and motivation for observing. Given the centrality of observations to coaching, this blog post focuses on the components of classroom observations, discusses the ways they may threaten the very intentions of coaching and how we might rethink the who, how and why of classroom observations. The biggest reason appears to be that teachers often don’t trust the purpose, the people and the process around observations. To be clear: teachers think they can be valuable it’s just that for many, observations in their current form are not valuable.

For many teachers across multiple countries whom I have been interviewing over the last several years, classroom observations are often meaningless exercises devoid of utility. The above can be true, except when it isn’t.

Classroom observation form mindup