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Monitoring teaching acts 287
the prime elements of learning and teaching—ideas and ideologies, policies and plans, methods and materials, learners and teachers— all mix together. It is there the effectiveness of innovative thoughts on teaching is tried and tested. What actually happens there largely determines the extent to which learning potential is realized, and desired outcomes are achieved. The task of systematically observing classroom events, therefore, becomes central to the goal of monitor- ing teaching acts.
Several models of classroom observation are available in the professional literature on L2 teaching. It is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss them in detail (see Allwright, 1988, for a detailed discussion, and Kumaravadivelu, 1999b, for a recent critique). But, a brief background information is in order. For the purpose of this chapter, it is useful to classify classroom observation models into two types: product-oriented and process-oriented.
Product-Oriented Models
Product-oriented models of classroom observation (e.g., Jarvis, 1968; Moskowitz, 1971) are based on the assumption that a description of teacher behavior is necessary in order to build a classroom behavior profile of the teacher. These models use a finite set of preselected and predetermined categories for describing certain verbal behav- iors of teachers and learners as they interact in the classroom. The categories mainly include teacher behavior (such as, “Teacher asks questions,” “Teacher gives directions”) and learner behavior (such as, “Learner responds,” “Learner initiates”). They are intended to help observe, describe, classify, and, through quantitative or statis- tical method of analysis, assign certain numerical values (such as the number of times students respond) to verbal behaviors.
These models are useful for a partial understanding of classroom activities, particularly in terms of teacher talk and student talk. Nev- ertheless, they all share four crucial limitations:
• they focus exclusively on the product of verbal behaviors of teachers and learners and give little or no consideration to class- room learning and teaching processes that prompt those verbal behaviors;
• they depend on quantitative measurements, thereby losing the essence of communicative intent that cannot be reduced to nu- merical codification;