Classroom observation: desirable conditions established by teachers

Abstract

Teacher observation is regarded as an essential procedure in the teacher training process. However, the vast majority of observation experiences have a top-down approach, as they are usually established by experts such as university teaching staff or school inspectors working for the administration. With a bottom-up approach in mind, this paper examines the attitudes of a wide range of teachers towards observation by focusing the analysis on three classes of attitudinal components: the cognitive, the affective, and the conative components. 185 infant, junior, secondary, university, and private language school teachers completed a questionnaire concerning the role of observation in the language classroom. The main result is a decalogue of prerequisites, a how-to handbook for successful classroom observation, compiled by teachers themselves.

Keywords:

• classroom observation
• teachers’ attitudes
• teacher training

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the grants FFI2009-10264/FILO and FFI2008-00585/FILO, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and the grant IT311-10, awarded by the Department of Education, University and Research of the Basque Government. We would also like to wholeheartedly thank the reviewers for their insightful and enriching contributions. However, any shortcomings remain our responsibility.