31 Mar
2005
31 Mar
'05
5:09 p.m.
More detail is a good idea, and I would be glad to give some more details on
what we're doing here currently. I'm hoping that my request for sharing of
midterm intervention strategies will generate some fruitful conversations on
this list. It seems to me that there should be more sharing of useful
strategies and ideas among those of us who are training undergraduate
mathematics teachers (graduate students and otherwise). I'm eager to hear
what other people do during the middle of the term to support their charges!
Here are some more details on our classroom observations...
We send an email to each of our calculus instructors early in the semester
letting them know that they will be observed by a preceptor and letting them
know the reasons for these observations -- to provide training and mentoring
to our calculus teachers and to help deliver the highest quality instruction
to our calculus students. Each instructor is assigned to a preceptor who
then contacts that instructor to arrange an observation. Before the
observation, the preceptor and instructor meet and address the following
questions.
1) In what ways do you feel the class is going well?
2) Do you have any concerns about the course or the students? If so, what
are they?
3) Are there any specific issues for which the observer should look during
class?
4) What are your teaching and/or content goals for the particular class
being observed?
This provides the instructor a chance to reflect on his or her teaching,
which is a good thing in and of itself. It also gives the preceptor an idea
of things to look for during the observation. Also, if the instructor has
an answer to question 3, then the instructor is more likely to buy in to the
whole process since they will be looking forward to our feedback on that
issue.
During the observation, the preceptor sits quietly in the back of the class
and watches the instructor, the students, and their interactions. We're
currently developing a checklist of sorts which lists things to look for.
The current draft features ten clusters: preparation, opening, content,
delivery, activities, technology, knowledge of students, questioning,
student participation, and closing. Checklist might be a misleading term,
since the list is not intended to be checked off. Instead it's more of a
reminder of areas of class to observe.
After the observation, the instructor and the preceptor meet again for a
debriefing. We typically give the instructor a chance to share his or her
thoughts on the class first, then expand on these observations with our own.
The goal of this debriefing is to identity 2-3 strengths of the instructors
teaching and 2-3 areas which could be improved, along with specific
suggestions for improvements. All of this goes into a report/note written
by the preceptor. The instructor is given a copy of the report, and a copy
is archived for future follow-up.
What about other people? How do you conduct mid-semester classroom
observations?
Derek
On 3/29/05 3:34 PM, "Dara Sandow" <sandowda(a)msu.edu> wrote:
In describing their practices, it might be useful to
people to share
more detail.
For ex., there are different ways of structuring observations (e.g.,
the person being observed does/doesn't identify ahead of time a
particular issue or practice that s/he'd like feedback on, the
teacher is/isn't videotaped, the "observation" does/doesn't attend
explicitly to elements of teaching that occur outside of the
classroom, such as planning and giving student written feedback) and
of eliciting feedback from students, both in terms of the foci of the
questions (e.g., general strengths and weakness, specific teaching
practices) and their structure (e.g., closed questions w/ 1-5 scales,
open-ended questions).
Dara
--
Derek Bruff, Preceptor
Department of Mathematics, Harvard University
Email: bruff(a)fas.harvard.edu
Web: http://www.derekbruff.com/