Observation Skills for Effective Teaching

People in all walks of life want to know how they can acquire the skills and competencies to become a professional in their field. All of us want to become experts orprofessionals,but we know that it requires more than simply a desire to be good at what we do. This book focuses on one of the primary means by which you can become a professional--by observing others and incorporating what you see and hear into your own behavior. To be sure, this process requires more than simply watching others who are competent in their jobs. To become competent at teaching, you must know what to look for, and you must have a framework or structure by which what is observed can be made meaningful for your own behavior. Other skills are needed, too. You must be psychologically ready and physically prepared to observe, have tools for categorizing and recording what you see, and have a knowledge of content and methods. But even this is not enough: To become a professional, you must understand the patterns and sequences of effective teaching that make all of the parts work as a whole. Where do effective teachers learn to make the parts work as a whole? How do they bring their natural abilities, knowledge of content and teaching methods, and professional goals together into a harmonious pattern of intelligent behavior to become a professional? It isn't from books or training sessions alone--these can focus on only a small number of activities. It isn't from teaching experience, either--the hectic pace of the classroom makes it impossible for many teachers to reflect on their own patterns of behavior. Only through observing more experienced teachers can all of these ingredients be brought together into a meaningful pattern to be modeled in your own classroom. These patterns of practice--not individual techniques, strategies, or methods alone--make teachers effective. As we will see in this text, the purpose of observation is to improve yourself. Plans for self-improvement are realistic when they are based on your own unique strengths and challenges and on the school context in which they are to occur. The importance of this latter point is not always recognized: A teaching activity that is effective in one school or classroom may not be effective in another. No amount of student teaching, experience or formal instruction can prepare you to teach in every classroom context. Although student teaching and instruction can point you in the right direction to maximize your growth, the realities of a specific classroom and the students within it will determinewhatandhow muchyou learn and grow as a teacher. This is the unique function of classroom observation: to understand teaching within specific classrooms of learners, and to develop a program of self-improvement based on that understanding. In short, the dimensions of effective teaching ultimately must be defined by the qualities and characteristics of those who must be taught. This is why classroom observation is so important: It reveals the patterns of practice by which real teachers--professionals--refine and match the dimensions of effective teaching most appropriate to a specific population of learners. To accomplish this goal, this book presents effective teaching practices that can be observed during three stages of your career-preteaching, student teaching, and induction- (first-) year teaching. At each of these stages this text provides competencies for preparing you to observe, learning how to . observe, and knowing what to observe. ORGANIZATION OF THIS TEXT Chapter 1 focuses on the close and necessary relationship between personal attributes for successful living and professional competence. It explores the characteristics that make an individual successful as a person as well as a professional--characteristics that you will learn from classroom observation. ChaptBorich, Gary D. is the author of 'Observation Skills for Effective Teaching', published 2002 under ISBN 9780130618979 and ISBN 0130618977.