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Can We Actually Make Lesson Observations Supportive?


Most teachers get nervous about observation lessons. Whether the school agrees with grading lessons or not, the teacher feels as if they are being judged on a very small snapshot of their working practice.

Most senior leaders overseeing teaching and learning (myself included) talk about the need for lesson observations to be ‘non-judgmental’ and ‘supportive’.

Lesson observations have been around for decades (or long before my time at least!) and I guarantee that the first time a school completed them it was focused on making sure people were doing their jobs correctly. The process, by its nature, is judgmental. It’s about accountability.

The problem is that over the past decade schools have looked to sell the process as one of support. “We are going to help you identify areas for development and then put a CPD programme in place to help you” to most teachers this actually means “We are going to judge you, give you a chance to improve, and then judge you again”. It doesn’t feel like a supportive process to teachers.

So how can we make lesson observations less judgmental and more supportive?

If lesson observations are a supportive measure then why do they need to be completed by a line manager or senior leader? Why can’t they be completed by a peer? Why does the feedback from each observation need to be graded and logged somewhere?

Here’s my suggestion:

Set up learning triads (3 teachers supporting each other in their development) in your school. Ask them to complete a self-reflection on their teaching (you could use teaching standards, or a framework designed by your school (or even better by your teaching staff)). Once staff have identified an area for development they can then discuss this with their learning triads and complete their own research on different strategies for developing this area of practice.
Once they have had opportunities to experiment with this area of their deliver, get them to film themselves teach (I would strongly recommend Swivl, but Iris is also a good system) and complete a self-reflection template. This video can be shared with their learning triads along with a copy of their self-reflection in order to create a feedback discussion with their peers. Videos can be filmed throughout the year showing the teacher’s development.

Swivl- an example of a product on the market that can film lessons

Everybody wins!

  • Teachers engage in a truly supportive and development process
  • Teachers get experience of coaching each other
  • Senior Leaders get a bank of videos of their teachers that can, if needed, be privately graded in order to satisfy any inspection needs
  • The school builds up a library of videos demonstrating good practice that can support the development of all teachers

This blog outlines my vision for lesson observations in my current school, Regents International School, Pattaya, and is by no means tried and tested so I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on this blog. Please comment and let me know what your school does.

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