Observational Reports on Teaching: An Examination of the Ability to Reflect

Eryn White

School of Education and Leadership, City University of Seattle

EEA 539: Supervision of Instruction

Brian Bieber

Nov 23, 2022

 Observational Reports on Teaching: An Examination of the Ability to Reflect

A school administrator’s job is not merely to manage the financial and disciplinary operations

related to a school community but to be an educational leader who provides “quality teaching and

optimum learning for all school students” (Alberta Education, 2020, p. 2). Providing quality support for

teachers through supervision is essential to this process. Supervision in a school is beneficial to teacher

efficacy when conducted in a democratic process. Educators will garner feelings of success when their

work is viewed as complex so that feedback is not reduced to platitudes or generalizations. Adhering to a

clinical supervision model allows teachers to be part of the process, making goals that are self-directed

while holding themselves responsible for their actions. Finally, a collaborative process will aid this work

and build a collegial learning environment. Two observations were performed for this report, one

qualitative and one quantitative, with different teachers, grades, and subjects. A democratic process of

supervision can be powerful for supporting reflective practices with teachers who are focused on being

lifelong learners.

Qualitative Observation

Context

The qualitative supervision was conducted in a grade 10 science class of 25 students for a teacher

who has been with the school for 18 years. Typically, the teacher's assignment includes science 9, biology

20 and 30, and Science 30. They have not taught Science 10 for the last decade of their practice. The class

is made up of a variety of learners, none of which are operating with a modified program nor with severe

behavioural or cognitive delays. On the day of supervision, there were 18 learners present. The class

instruction was continuing with a lesson on biology and the examination of the cell and its function in a

botanical context. The teacher uses a framework for instruction that is reminiscent of the Madeline Hunter

template, minus the modelling stage. During our pre-observation conference, we discussed the concepts

that were included in this instruction process and what larger objectives the teacher was looking to

achieve. The lesson was an extension of the concepts related to the effect of the surface area of the cells.
One point of challenge identified for this unit of study is the engagement of learners. A way that the

teacher addresses the lack of excitement in this unit (and as a broad pedagogical stance as a whole) is to

segment the flow of the lesson into several chunks of about 10-15 minutes. This lesson included an

introduction, the establishment of objectives, a review of concepts, a demonstration, guided classroom

discussion with notes, an identification activity, the viewing of sample imagery, and finally group work to

practice microscopy skills. We decided the focus of the supervision would be on student engagement

through collecting selective verbatim statements during transitions supported with open-ended

observations of paralleled teacher and student activity.

Observations

Concerning the space available to track both the statements and actions of the teacher as well as

the activity of the class, a design of a simple t-chart document (appendix 1) accompanied by a blank page

for transcription (appendix 2) to collect the appropriate data. For a 72-minute class, the back and front of

two letter-sized pieces of paper provided sufficient space to record the information.

During the first 10 minutes of class, it was observed that the teacher made three statements

inferring a generalized, negative relationship with botany such as: “We’re gonna look at plants, let’s get

excited”, to “What have plants ever done to you?”, and “Some people think plants are boring”. For the

remainder of the lesson, the teacher did not mention anything else alluding to implied or perceived

emotional responses to botany until the last 5 minutes in which the teacher stated, “Look at the beauty

that is in plants. Maybe we’ll have a future botanist in our class?”

There were several clear points of transition between activities, and the teacher articulated student

expectations and indicated the intended flow of the lesson. The transitional statements were a mix of

interjections and direct statements, ranging from “I should put smiley faces on all of those” (referring to

icons on an introductory slide), to “Before you get started, I’m going to give you a few instructions”.

During instruction, the teacher used anecdotes to extend the explanation of concepts, included a few
probing questions to elicit responses from the students, and offered a mnemonic device to help them

remember the difference between two terms.

The observations of teacher activity and correlating student activity revealed most students were

attentive to the task at hand, but not in any clear way that would indicate students were actively engaged

in their work. George Couros (2022) parsed the concepts of engagement and empowerment on his blog

“Why Engagement is Crucial to Empowerment, but Empowerment is Still the Goal” with the statement

that “you can be engaged but it doesn’t mean you are empowered, but if you are empowered, you are

positively engaged” (para. 1). This is a fair assessment of the intertwined ideas in relationship to the

context of this supervision. The teacher was interested in the ability to captivate the learners so that they

take on learning, rather than merely being passive participants “engaged” in activities.

During the post-observation, after thanking the teacher for their participation and reminding them

that any comments provided were merely for the benefit of their own self-reflection and not evaluative,

the selective verbatim data was presented for perusal. The teacher was prompted to read the information

through the lens of student engagement and provide any observations or insights they might have. After

reading, the teacher offered the statement, “Well yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.”

The teacher went on to describe how this captured their strengths in teaching: providing multiple

examples of the information in order to concretize the information. Under other circumstances they would

have brought in some leaves, or even conducted a tracing activity to show the veins of a leaf, providing

real context. With no prompting the teacher continued to talk about how their knowledge base in biology

gives them confidence in connecting big ideas together and extending concepts with examples while her

lack of “expertise” in physics limits their ability to be as comfortable.

I asked whether there were any areas of growth that they could see with the question, “If you

were to do this lesson tomorrow, what are some things that you might tweak to enhance student

engagement?” To help their reflection I provided notes on the concurrent activities of teaching and

learning (appendix 2). The teacher extended that going through a lesson and providing questions is a big
part of their goal, and they work toward not answering any questions or responses with negative

statements, but rather with redirection and correction. For example, when the class was asked if they

could colour the stomata one student responded with “Yeah”. A stoma is a hole in the surface of the leaf

made by the guard cells, so it is not actually an object and therfore should not be coloured. To this, the

teacher responded, “Hold onto that thought for a second. Before we answer that, let's take a look at what a

guard cell is.”

To redirect the conversation back to the main goal of student engagement, I asked “Was today’s

class engaging for students, and how do you know?” The teacher indicated that it was engaging and

identified that students were actively working, they completed the identification colouring sheet, and

there were no mistakes made during the identification activity.

Reflection

My interactions with the teacher were collegial and supportive of the processes present in

their practice. During the pre-conference it was very important to employ reflective listening skills

in order to clarify the teacher's goals. Because supervision is a relatively new practice for the

teachers at this site, asking them to identify what they would like for me to support them in

presented a challenge. This teacher was not considering how the supervision could help them, but

rather how their involvement in the project could support me. With mirroring statements and

open-ended questions, I was able to identify a goal that was reflective of the teacher’s needs.

A point of interest was how the post-conference took on the feel of a casual conversation, in

which the teacher was discussing reasons for their classroom procedures and the philosophy

underpinning their pedagogy. Throughout the process, I found myself framing statements within

the context of supervision being non-evaluative but for the purpose of providing points of reflection

for the teacher. My feeling during the post-conference was that I was not facilitating introspection,

so the penultimate commentary was an observation. After receiving permission, I noted that the

teacher included several statements that implied a need to value the study of plants during the
beginning of the lesson and did not return to this. Being positive and having a good report provided

the space for the teacher to conclude with a smile, “Well, I’m not going to dress up in a plant

costume or anything.”

Quantitative Observation

Context

The quantitative supervision was conducted in a grade 8 class of 26 students, 23 of which are

present that day. There was a range of learners working on a regular grade 8 program, with no students

identified with severe behavioural or cognitive delays. The space was arranged in 5 groups of four desk

pods and three groups of three. Due to absences, two students were in a pod of three by themself. The

teacher has had a variety of junior high math classes mostly concentrated on grades 7 and 8 for the

majority of their 18-year career at this school. The lesson in question was an extension lesson on adding

and subtracting fractions, setting the stage for a new concept of order of operations. The teacher identified

that the review would come to some students quickly, while some would not remember but be able to

complete the work, and others would struggle due to missing instruction and absenteeism.

The teacher has set routines for instruction, breaking the 72 minutes into smaller chunks. A

typical class is organized as such: math facts practice, homework check, the teaching of a new concept

with guided procedural examples and a few practice questions, and finally an application of the new

concept with a worksheet that is due in the next class. This class was slightly unique as the teacher was

introducing a competitive aspect to the application of the new concept in which students were given an

opportunity to win mystery prizes for their performances.

During the pre-conference discussion, we identified that an avenue of focus would be on 5

students identified as potentially facing some struggle. The teacher indicated that some of the students

were “low” while others were “distracted” or “not using the resources to their full potential”. The teacher

has a process for students to work through challenges labelled SNOT: self, neighbour, out, and teacher,

identifying the levels of intervention that students can access to support them. Self is to look back on their
own resources and notes. Neighbour is to ask a member of their pod for help, not the answer. Out is to

travel to another pod for assistance. Finally, teacher is to illicit the teacher for help. It was identified that

this could be a metric to measure how many times students accessed specific support. Also, it was

decided to add a measure of how active students were, correlated with the level of the cognitive load

relative to Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains.

Observations

A chart for each student (appendix 3) was created to identify student engagement as H for high,

M for medium and L for Low, in segments of time approximating 10 minutes. These were also aligned

with the hierarchy of intervention (S.N.O.T.) and Bloom’s taxonomy (remember, understand, apply,

analyze, evaluate, or create). During the class period, two of the previously identified students were

absent, so I selected three other students based on their seating in the class and my understanding of their

strengths as academic students; consciously choosing studious learners for a range of data. During the

lesson, there were two opportunities for students to utilize their peers for support. Of those six students,

there were four instances of teacher, eight instances of self, two instances of neighbour, one instance of

out and, two instances of students using no support. Engagement varied from student to student, but the

comparison of activity to activity within a student set of data revealed a relatively stable measurement.

Meaning, if a student was to score a low or medium rating in engagement, then this was seen in most

parts of the lesson (student 1, student 6). Whereas if a student was perceived as having high engagement,

then this stayed relatively uniform throughout the class (student 4, student 5). However, two students

tracked oppositely. One student started with high engagement (student 2) and ended with low

engagement, while the other (student 3) started off low and ended high. The cognitive domains of the

activities in the lesson never went beyond the application stage, which could be understood by the nature

of a review lesson.

During the post-conference conversation, I presented the data to the teacher and thanked them for

the opportunity to sit and discuss the lesson. I explained that I had entered Ts in rows 2, 3, and 5 of the

chart as it was a representation of teacher instruction, rather than students asking for support. While in
row 1, an S and an N were put in as the procedure of the math facts quiz was for students to do the work

themselves and then have a neighbour mark their work as the teacher read out the correct answers. I

prompted the teacher to have a look at the data with the caveat of putting a critical eye toward student

engagement. The first comment was on the increased engagement for student 2, and that the inclusion of a

game attached to the new practice most likely incentivized performance. The next comment was that

student 1 is often “grumpy”, and this data was reflective of their usual attitude toward learning. There

were other comments about how the data was expected such as for students 4 and 5, and noticeably

increased in the last few weeks for student 3 (all of which were substituted into the data collection due to

absences).

I noted that it was observed that the class was very quiet and was met with the conclusion that it

was most likely related to the competitive nature of the game aspect that was added. At this point, I

mentioned that the addition of competition in a system that promoted peer support seemed contrary in

nature and I asked what they thought about that idea. In response, the teacher spoke about how the game

provided motivation for students that can struggle to see a purpose in the work. I continued by inquiring

about how the addition of a game fit into the routine. The teacher indicated that daily practice is built into

each class, so the inclusion of this game did not pose a problem and the simple rules made for an easy

adaptation.

To conclude the post-conference, I asked the teacher how this procedure could be more helpful

for them in the future. For example, if the data collection were to be reduced to one focus for fewer

students or if it were expanded into a holistic set for the group. The teacher was not entirely sure how this

might be adapted. I worked on suggesting a few ideas and it was agreed that with some tweaks to the data

chart, it could be used to examine how and when students are utilizing S.N.O.T. for support.

Reflection

The experience was pleasant and provided a detailed look into the practices of the teacher. The

conversation was led by them and focused on their concerns and perceptions. Having said that though,
deep and insightful reflection on pedagogy was stifled, as it was brought up on a few occasions how the

data was supportive of the teacher’s already established perceptions of student engagement and ability. In

my opinion, it was interesting to see most of the lesson was directed activity that did not go further than

application. My wonder is how to effectively identify foci relative to the teacher and insight reflecting on

their practices to help answer such questions as to why some students are engaged and some are not.

Furthermore, as indicated after the qualitative supervision, it would be beneficial to define what a teacher

identifies as engagement. Identifying a clear target makes categorizing the margins of success in

achieving a goal much more salient. After observing what the teacher identified as being indicators of

engagement left me to wonder what they thought engagement was. In this case, the collection of the right

data, framed with the right questions might instill metacognition.

Conclusion

In order to focus on student learning, an instructional leader can provide support for teachers to

become their best. Whether they are first-year teachers or veterans in the system, all professionals need to

be open to growth. To make growth meaningful, taking personal responsibility for goals is important.

Goals need to be relative to individual practice yet have an element of the unknown. It can be challenging

to look at a closed system that is operating well and consider there to be an area of improvement and an

outside look can provide a fresh perspective. Teachers constantly tweak their practices to refine delivery

and make routines effective, however large shifts in practices can be daunting. Change is synonymous

with work, and in a taxing job, it can be stressful to take on more; especially in times when the mantra is

to value mental health by reducing personal workload.

In the end, it is our duty to grow as professionals, and taking a stance of being a life-long learner

with a growth mindset is the healthiest way to approach change. “While all changes do not lead to

improvement, all improvement requires change” (Institute for Health Care Improvement, 2022, para 1). A

democratic process of supervision can be powerful for supporting reflective practices with teachers who

are focused on being lifelong learners.

 References

Alberta Education. 2020. Leadership Quality Standard. https://www.alberta.ca/assets/documents/ed-

leadership-quality-standard-english.pdf

Couros, G. (2022) Why Engagement is Crucial to Empowerment, but Empowerment is Still the Goal.

https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8692

Institute for Health Care Improvement. 2022. Changes.

https://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Changes/default.aspx
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