Page 305 - Beyond Methods

Monitoring teaching acts 293
• Step 3: After going over the supplied information and other in- structional material(s) to be used in the class(es) to be observed, the observer may seek necessary clarification from the teacher.
• Step 4: The observer attends the teaching of one class or one unit of lessons over several class sessions and videotapes the class(es). The observer also takes notes on certain interactional episodes that, from her personal point of view, sound interesting or intrigu- ing, something that needs to be jointly explored with the teacher. Even short episodes are sufficient. The purpose is intensive, not extensive, analysis.
• Step 5: As soon as possible—so as not to lose memory of class- room experience—the teacher watches the video and, like the ob- server, also takes notes on certain interactional episodes that, from her personal point of view, sound interesting or intriguing, something that needs to be jointly explored with the observer. At this crucial stage, the teacher might ask questions such as: Did I initiate all the topics or did my students initiate some? Are most of the questions display questions or referential questions? What is the nature of teacher/student talk—initiating, respond- ing, explaining, modeling, negotiating? Are there learner-learner exchange of ideas? What part of my instruction has been suc- cessful or unsuccessful? What might be the reason(s) for the suc- cess or failure? What macrostrategy could have been used in this or that episode? What mismatch could have been anticipated and avoided? What changes might I like to effect? etc.
• Step6:Basedontheirnotes,theobserverandtheteacherexchange their initial views and jointly decide to select a few interactional episodes for further exploration and, if necessary, transcribe the data pertaining to those segments of classroom interaction where the episodes occur.
• Step 7: The observer and the teacher meet with group(s) of learn- ers who figured in the episodes selected for analysis, and talk about learner-learner, learner-teacher input and interaction in those episodes. This provides the much-needed learner perspec- tive to classroom events.
• Step 8: The observer and the teacher meet again for a post- observation analysis to discuss the already analyzed interactional episodes and to exchange their perspectives on what did or did not occur in the class(es) observed.
• Step 9: The observer and the teacher pull together all three per- spectives (teacher, learner, observer) and, using the macrostrate-