Humberto Marino

After the observation has taken place the collaborator can help the teacher to describe the
lesson as a feedback and to suggest areas for development or future research. He can
help him do this with the teachers own observation system or with video and audio
recordings of the lessons. In my experience I have done this feedback through observation
of a collaborators class and I focus on areas that strike me as important I write down
questions and the instructor answers them and gives me further explanation and the
theory behind her decisions.
There is always a reluctance of teachers to be supervised but Gebhard (1984) proposes a
different way to do this through Collaborative Supervision which is a problem solving
process that requires a sharing of ideas between the teacher and his supervisor. In this
kind of feedback, the supervisor, instead of telling the teacher what he should change,
might make questions like: What did you think of the lesson?, How did it go?, Did you
meet your objective? After giving suggestions, the supervisor can decide with the teacher
what to do next.
In my teaching experience I have seen this kind of feedback from my supervisor regarding
what I have to change in my teaching. There was a time when the supervisor told me that I
shouldnt allow my students to be standing up so much. I didnt like this correction but the
supervisor was right and I changed in this aspect and my situation improved. At the
beginning of the teaching career I totally agree supervisors telling teachers what things to
change but, as teachers become more experienced, I would go for Gebhards
Collaborative Supervision model because the experienced teachers know the basic
things an English teacher should be doing and so they can have a discussion with the
supervisor regarding the use of a certain technique in the classroom. Supervisors cannot
throw away the experienced teaches ideas because this latter group has experience that
support acting in certain ways within the English classroom.
Richards (1998) says there is certain resentment also in experienced teachers regarding
novice ones observing their classes. But this can be worked out if the trainee focuses on a
certain aspect of teacher development like organization of the lesson, teachers time
management, students performance on tasks and/or teachers explanations among

others. The trainee can also collect information which can be used by the expert teacher to
reflect upon how he can improve his practice. The tools he can use to gather data are
time samples, where specific behaviors are displayed during a lesson, coding forms,
where behaviors have a certain code which is ticked if displayed during a lesson,
descriptive narrative, where the observer writes a narrative describing the main events of
the lessons.
In the last few days I have usually entered an experienced teachers class and these
guidelines will surely help me to enrich the observation experience because they have
given me ideas relating other aspects of teaching I can focus on and how I can make the
process valuable for the advanced teacher also. I have never used the previous tools for
collecting data but I will start using them as a means to get the most out of the process of
observing the classroom and getting feedback.
A trainee can also benefit from this process when he reflects about the specific topic he
will be examining: for example if the topic to be studied is teachers questions he might
start to wonder: What is my philosophy of questioning? What is the purpose of questions in
the classroom? What are the types of questions that I use more? After he has observed,
he can later discuss with the advanced teacher the questioning process he has recently
seen in the classroom.
Finally I am going to write about Moskowitz study and its validity regarding classroom
observation and feedback. Although testimonials give a good impression that a study is
having positive results, they are not enough in the research context because they dont
prove anything and they do not use scientific tools to give objective results. Moskowitz
does not give too much importance to the student teachers comments in her study, she
just cites what they said as more evidence that the Flanders system works. Given the fact
that this is a study about attitudes, positive comments and teachers enthusiasm is a valid
proof of the good results of the interaction analysis system. Of course offering teachers
comments as definite evidence is not enough and that is why Moskowitz presents other
tools of data collecting.
The results from the other instruments: TSRT (Teaching Situation Reaction Test), FLAQ
(Foreign

Language

Attitude

Questionnaire),

STAQ

(Student

Teachers

Attitude

Questionnaire) and the CTAQ (Cooperating Teachers Attitude Questionnaire) are a valid

and conclusive proof of the validity of the study since these are recognized scientific tools
used to measure more objectives results. They clearly show that the foreign language
student teachers become significantly more positive in their attitudes toward teaching after
the training in the Flanders system. The students of these teachers also reveal more
positive attitudes toward their teachers after being trained in the system.
Moskowitz1 also presents convincing evidence that the Flanders system of interaction
analysis is effective when she mentions previous studies (Amidon and Hough 1964 and
Furst 1965) student teachers made significant changes in the teaching behavior they
used when taught the Flanders system. They had different and better teaching patterns
than those teachers that hadnt followed this system. These teaching patterns contributed
to the commonly accepted goals of education.
In this text I have written about the different kinds of observation and feedback in the
language classroom as a tool for improving the teaching practice. Very often the
supervisor gives feedback and sometimes he uses video or audio recordings to share the
observation results. As opposed to the traditional talk where the supervisor tells the
student teacher what he can change and he obeys, there is the Collaborative Supervision
Model where both parties share ideas and get to an agreement of what is needed in the
classroom. Time samples, coding forms and descriptive narratives are other tools to gather
data during the observation phase and provide valuable input for reflection both for the
experienced and novice teacher. Finally, although teachers comments are not an objective
proof that the interaction analysis works, they provide an interesting suggestion that this
system is working. Moskowitz presents definite and conclusive evidence that Flanders
system functions well through various research instruments that present positive data.

1 In Allwright (1988)

Bibliografa
Allwright, D. (1988). Observation in the language Classroom. London and New
York: Longman.
Gebhard, J. G. (1984). Models of Supervision: Choices. Tesol Quarterly.
Quirke, P. (1996). USING UNSEEN OBSERVATIONS FOR AN IN-SERVICE TEACHER
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME. The Teacher Trainer
http://www.philseflsupport.com/unseenobs.htm Consulted on April 29th
2015.
Richards, J. (1998). Beyond Training. CUP.