Conversation: Our Window On Teacher ThinkingĬonversation is like a glass-bottomed boat: it allows us to peer beneath the surface and see what's normally hidden from our view. What we're really interested in-or should be-is teacher thinking.Īnd there's only one way to gain direct insight into teacher thinking: conversation.

Lesson plans, like direct observations, reveal just the surface features of teachers' planning and preparation, so a “checklist” approach to looking at lesson plans will provide fairly little insight.įor example, a lesson plan may contain learning targets, success criteria, and differentiated learning activities.īut what does that really tell us about the teacher's professional judgment? Lesson plans pulled straight from the teacher's guide-or the internet-can check all the right boxes.

To get a better sense of teachers' thinking and planning, many administrators ask for lesson plans-perhaps on a regular basis, or perhaps just when observing.īut even the most detailed lesson plans don't capture what really matters: teacher thinking. We miss a great deal of context simply because we can't be there all the time.īut we also miss a great deal because it's not inherently observable-either it happens outside of class time, or it happens entirely inside the teacher's mind. Perhaps the first step is to abandon the hubris that leads us to assume “If I can't see it, it doesn't exist.”Įven the most diligent observer sees only a few of the 1,000 hours each teacher spends with students in a given year (though leaders who conduct regular classroom walkthroughs see far more than average). Gathering insight into areas of practice that are hard to observe directly requires us to rethink our approach to evidence. Notably, only the Learning Environments and Learning Experiences domains address what actually happens during class time-only some of which is directly observable.įortunately, many teacher evaluation systems are based on all four of Danielson's domains, so-in theory, at least-administrators are obliged to consider the work teachers do outside of class time to ensure student success.īut how can we gather evidence of teacher practice we can't observe? Gathering Evidence of the Invisible In the latest iteration of her Framework for Teaching, Charlotte Danielson identifies four major domains of teacher practice: Danielson's 4 Domains of Teacher Practice © 2022 The Danielson Group. To get a more complete picture and see the whole “iceberg” of practice, we can look to maps like Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching. Yet visible teaching behaviors are just a small fraction of what matters. Whether the teacher is using a particular instructional technique.Whether the learning target and success criteria are posted on the wall.Instructional leaders can fall into the observability bias trap when conducting the two primary teacher supervision and evaluation activities:įor example, an observation or walkthrough form must, by its very nature, focus on features that are easy to observe, such as: Mapping Professional Practice: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks to Support Teacher Growth, by Heather Bell-Williams & Justin Baeder, p. Just as a facade is not the same as an actual house, observable look-fors aren’t the same as the actual practice educators are enacting. Observability bias leads observers to mistake what they can see for the entirety of practice. Observability bias is the tendency of instructional leaders to focus on what is easiest for them to observe, rather than the key decisions teachers are making.

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