Post-observation Conferences Research Articles

Examining the Interplay of Teacher Emotional Intelligence and Feedback Responsiveness in Post-observation Conferences: Voices from Iran

Examining the Interplay of Teacher Emotional Intelligence and Feedback Responsiveness in Post-observation Conferences: Voices from Iran

Developing student-teachers’ interactional competence through video-enhanced reflection: a discursive timeline analysis of negative evaluation in classroom interaction

ABSTRACT This article presents a case study of a student-teacher’s change in classroom interactional practices as she engages in video-enhanced reflections and collaborative feedback encounters during her practicum in Sweden. We specifically focus on an interactional practice that can be observed in many classrooms: teachers’ use of (overt) negative evaluation (i.e. ‘No!’) that immediately follows learners’ incorrect answers. Using discursive timeline analysis (DTA), which is a combination of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Ethnography, we track the use of the focal interactional phenomenon across (1) video-recorded classroom interactions, (2) audio-recorded triadic post observation conferences, (3) student-teacher portfolios, and (4) interviews. We demonstrate that after getting video-based feedback with a video-tagging tool (i.e. VEO) and reflecting on her overuse of (overt) negative evaluation, the focal student-teacher avoids this interactional practice in her future teaching. As the analysis illustrates, this change of practice is possible thanks to data-led reflections and the evidence-based feedback that the student-teacher received. Our analysis therefore shows that reflection and feedback with a mobile video-tagging tool can facilitate increased awareness of classroom interactional practices. We argue that digitally enhanced, video-based reflections can promote teacher-learning in teacher education programmes and that using discursive timeline analysis can provide rich insights into these processes.

Navigating Professional Identity: Insights into the Effects of Post-Observation Conferences on Educational Supervisors

Navigating Professional Identity: Insights into the Effects of Post-Observation Conferences on Educational Supervisors

Language choices in post‐observation conferences: L1 or L2, that is the question

AbstractFeedback within the context of post‐observation conferences (POCs) is critical for English language teachers' professional development. To date, however, surprisingly there has not yet been any study on language choices for feedback communication in POCs, considering around 80% of English language teachers worldwide are nonnative‐English speakers (NNESs) (Moussu, 2018). This study adopts the research paradigm of social constructivism, with a qualitative design to explore language choices (Chinese as L1 and English as L2) by one Chinese mentor and four Chinese mentees in POCs, in a near‐peer mentoring project in a UK‐based MA TESOL program. Data collected include two POCs, a mentor interview, and four mentee questionnaire answers. The data were analysed in depth by data reduction and inductive content analysis. It was found that both emotional and practical reasons resulted in the language decisions by the mentor and the mentees in the POCs. Albeit with small sample size, this study shows the intricacy of language use by NNESs in POCs in preservice teacher education programs and provides insights into how both mentor and mentees can be empowered as active agents capable of making judicious use of L1 and L2 for effective feedback communication in POCs.

Investigating the Perceptions of Saudi EFL Supervisors and Teachers towards the Effect of Post-Observation Conferences on Teachers’ Professional Development through Assessing Teachers’ Reflection

This study investigated the effect of the post-observation conferences conducted by supervisors on teachers’ professional growth through assessing teachers’ reflection as an important type of thought. The sample consisted of 30 Saudi EFL (English Foreign Language) female participants divided into 10 supervisors and 20 teachers. Structured interviews were used to investigate the participants’ perceptions towards those supervisory meetings. The data analysis asserted that the participants stated that the post-observation meetings contribute to teacher professional development through practicing the reflective teaching, but in the way they understand the term ‘reflection’. This misunderstanding by some is due to the fact that they were not familiar with the proper meaning of reflection. Consequently, the teachers cannot reflect appropriately and critically upon their practices.

Instructional leadership practices: Exploring deputy principal’s instructional leadership practices – A Zimbabwean case study

School reform efforts have focussed on the principal as the major determinant of students’ outcome without saying much on the contribution of deputy principals. Deputy principals are 2nd on the school’s hierarchical structure. The distributed leadership construct advocates more actors in instructional leadership. In this study we examined whether deputy principals were engaged in instructional leadership practices for overall student performance. The study was carried out in high schools of the Gutu district of the Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. A qualitative research approach and a case study design were adopted for the study. Three deputy principals, 1 deputising at a government-run school, another at a church-run school and the other at a rural district council-run school were purposively sampled for document analysis, observation and multiple interviews. The findings reveal that deputy principals were engaged in instructional leadership practices cursorily and to a limited extent. Deputy principals performed instructional leadership tasks through vision statement formulation, supervision of lessons, monitoring students’ progress and modelling good teaching behaviour. In the era of accountability and distributed leadership, pressure mounts for more engagement of deputy principals as instructional leaders. We, therefore, recommend a collective approach to vision development by all stakeholders and the development of protocols that encompass pre- and post-observation conferences that mainly focus on the teacher.

Three Taiwanese elementary school English teachers’ pedagogical and collaborative practice of glocalization in CLIL lessons

ABSTRACT This case study explored three Taiwanese elementary school English teachers’ pedagogical and collaborative practice of glocalization in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) lessons. Based on the framework on English teachers’ designs and implementing glocalized CLIL lessons, the thematic analysis of the documents, observations of classroom practices and post-observation conferences, and interviews reached the following conclusion. Firstly, food was the major glocalized CLIL topic. Secondly, these three English teachers had positive attitudes towards their multimodal presentations of glocalized CLIL lessons. Thirdly, these three teachers possessed different levels of English language skills in their collaborative lesson planning. Fourthly, these teachers faced challenges in providing their learners with authentic tasks for pushed output (learners’ production of the language of learning and content knowledge for contextualized and meaningful use) and using English as the medium of instruction.

Teachers' personality types and their attitude toward receiving and employing postobservation feedback

AbstractClassroom observation has been long considered a powerful tool for evaluating and monitoring teachers' performance and progress. Teachers can benefit from the feedback during the postobservation conference but giving feedback is not a simple skill and needs knowledge and training. Research on tackling postobservation problems remains emerging and the aim of this study is to explore the role that a teacher's personality type–based on DiSC personality test‐ might play in postobservation conferences and reaction to receiving feedback from the supervisor. To gather data, 20 nonnative EFL teachers were asked to take the DiSC personality test to have their personality types identified, then they were observed three times, and each time they received feedback on their classroom management techniques. Results indicate that teachers with different personality types act differently during the postobservation conferences. While D and i styles are active and tend to employ feedback moderately and strongly in their classes, S and C styles are mostly passive with the tendency of employing feedback moderately and weakly. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of personality types in teachers' tolerance of criticism and their tendency to apply the received feedback in their future classes.

High-leverage teacher evaluation practices for instructional improvement

This study's purpose is to extend our understanding of school leadership for student learning by identifying high-leverage teacher evaluation practices that improve teaching. A partnership with a state education agency administered a teacher questionnaire regarding evaluation practices multiple times in one semester, then linked teacher responses to their next within-semester observation score. Broadly, teachers reported on scoring practices, the facilitation of post-observation conferences, feedback characteristics, and post-conference supports for evaluation-informed professional learning. Fixed effect regressions effectively compare observation scores and teacher-reported evaluation practices within the same teacher or teacher-by-evaluator pairing over four months while controlling for month-to-month influences on performance. The methods remove several serious confounders plausibly affecting related estimates in prior work. The analysis identifies six high-leverage teacher-reported evaluation practices, most of which apply to post-conference practices linking evaluation to professional learning. The evidence refines the academic understanding of leadership for student learning and implies that leadership preparation and in-service programs might emphasize the six high-leverage evaluation practices to promote active use among practicing leaders. Policymakers might ensure that aspiring and in-service leaders can develop these practices and that there are strong links between teacher evaluation and professional learning systems for school leaders to use.

Examining Middle School Mathematics Student Teachers’ Post-Observation Conferences

Teachingpracticum allows prospective teachers to use the theoretical and practical knowledge they have learned as a student. The conferences held with the participation of the cooperativeteachers,prospectiveteachers, and theirpeers that take place after each course, carry great importance for prospective teachers to develop their professional skills. This study aims to examine the conferences held after the practice courses in terms of type and content. Two conferences of 11 prospective teachers, who undertake teaching practicum in Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Department of Elementary Mathematics Education were analyzed through content analysis. It was observed that prospective teachers generally took into account the criticisms in the conferences after the first practice and took action to improve their second teaching session. The criticisms made in the second set of meetings were found to be more positive than the previous ones. Therefore, it can be said that post-conference evaluations of the prospective teachers contribute to their professional skills.

Learning How to Use Mitigation Devices: A Peer-Supervisory Context Between a Non-Native Peer-Supervisor and a Non-Native English Teacher

Learning how to provide effective supervision can be challenging. After all, helping language teachers increase awareness regarding their teaching practices requires the difficult task of giving them critical feedback, which, at times, can be a face-threatening act as will be defined later in the paper. To soften their criticism, supervisors make use of various language strategies. However, the task of delivering feedback using such language strategies in English can be even more difficult for supervisors who are also second language learners of English. Utilizing the mitigation devices Wajnryb (1994) conceptualized, this study analyzed the language used in three post-observation conferences in a peer-supervisory discourse between a non-native English teacher and a non-native peer-supervisor. The study found that mitigation devices as conceptualized by Wajnryb (1994) were effective in structuring a non-threatening and growth-oriented supervisory context when consciously used by the non-native peer-supervisor. Keywordslanguage teacher supervision, mitigation devices, non-native language teacher supervisor, peer-supervision

Stand-alone noticing as a resource for constructing the reflectable

Language teacher educators have made compelling arguments for the importance of fostering reflective practices. This paper explores how potential ‘reflectables’ may be located and negotiated through the practice of noticing. Based on a conversation analytic (CA) investigation of ‘stand-alone’ (not produced in conjunctions with questions, advice, and assessment) noticings in mentor-trainee conversations, the analysis shows how such noticing may be used to recalibrate the trainee’s reflective gaze and develop their professional vision. Findings contribute to the small body of video-based CA literature on post-observation conferences as well as the broader literature on noticing as an interactional practice within the specific context of language teaching and learning.

The Role of Mediational Discourse in Developing an EFL Teacher’s Oral Corrective Feedback Strategies: A Sociocultural Perspective

Taking sociocultural theory (SCT) as a theoretical framework, this qualitative phenomenological case study investigated the mediational discourse of a series of ten observation and post-observation conferences between a coach and an English language teacher teaching at Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Shiraz, Iran, in order to represent the development of student-focused oral feedback in an EFL teacher over time. Features of verbal mediation already identified by Wertsch (1998) such as shared definition of the task, inter-subjectivity, graduated help, and reasoning existed in the data, while they were insufficient in triggering the teacher to think conceptually about his use of oral feedback to students. Similarly, professional discourse, languaging motives, and teacher dynamicity, alongside the aforementioned meditational features, were revealed to be pivotal on the uptake of conceptual thinking by the teacher. The study was divided into three phases, namely, before, during, and after verbal mediations given by the coach to the teacher participant. The results of the study, along with the previous descriptive and empirical studies, accounted for an obvious role of mediational discourse in the development of teacher’s understanding of conceptual thinking through verbally-mediated activity. The results also found that negotiated help given by the teacher to learners was excessively pivotal in assisting learners to internalize their oral errors. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications for second language teachers to be reflective, dynamic, and evaluative in dealing with oral corrective feedback challenges in their classroom practices.

Going beyond the post-observation's interactional agenda: The observers’ references to their practices and pedagogical understandings

The recent proliferation of studies on the language of reflection unveiled post-observation conferences (POC) as an essential setting in teachers’ professional development. As the studies on these conferences have mainly focused on pre-service settings, research on in-service context where the peers are the providers of feedback remains limited. In an attempt to address this gap, this study micro-analyzes the video recordings of 14 in-service POC sessions at an English preparatory school with the theoretical and methodological tenets of conversation analysis. The findings reveal that reflective accounts are not limited to the observed, but generated by observers, too. Observing peers’ references to their past teaching events are found to function both as an interactional tool for the mitigation of critiques and as a tool for doing reflection in talk-in-interaction. The findings are conducive to the conversation analytic literature on language of reflection and expand the potential affordances of post-observation interactions.

Nonnative Teachers’ and Observers’ Evaluation of Teachers’ Teaching Quality: Perceptual Convergences and Divergences in Postobservation Conferences

One of the major purposes of observation is the improvement of instruction. In fact, observers evaluate teachers’ teaching quality and negotiate their critical comments with teachers in postobservation conferences. This paper was an attempt to investigate and compare Iranian EFL teachers’ and observers’ evaluations of teachers’ teaching quality. Specifically, we attempted to figure out any possible perceptual matches and/or mismatches between teachers and observers concerning teachers’ teaching quality. To this end, postobservation conferences between three Iranian EFL observers (one female and two male) and 11 Iranian EFL teachers who worked at a language institute in Iran were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Our findings indicated that two major themes were recurrent vis-à-vis observers’ evaluations; that is, their evaluations were mainly based on the specific teaching methodology of the institute as well as teachers’ and learners’ pronunciation and intonation. Three perceptual matches were found: teachers’ agreement with the observers’ comments regarding teaching methodology, pronunciation and stress patterns, as well as teachers’ general information. Furthermore, three major perceptual mismatches were found when teachers disagreed with the observers’ comments regarding teaching methodology, pronunciation and stress patterns, and teachers’ time management. Finally, our findings indicated that most of such perceptual mismatches were resolved through the dialogic interaction that occurred between the observers and teachers. A practical implication is that holding such postobservation conferences is of utmost importance as they might be mutually beneficial for both observers and teachers.

Critical Feedback Characteristics, Teacher Human Capital, and Early-Career Teacher Performance: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

Most education agencies have implemented new teacher evaluation systems that promise to improve teacher performance. Post-observation performance feedback is a theoretically important driver of this promise as it should ultimately develop teacher-specific weaknesses. This is the first large-scale study to use the written feedback provided to early-career teachers during formal post-observation conferences and quantitatively link critical feedback characteristics (CFCs) to measures of teacher human capital. We find that most conferences do not include CFCs, that feedback is typically unidimensional, and that less effective early-career teachers receive higher shares of CFCs. However, goal-setting is the only CFC associated with subsequent teacher performance. Beginning and less-educated teachers, for whom goal-setting may clarify performance expectations, drive this relationship.

Implementing task-based teacher training: Narratives from language classrooms

This paper aims to document the impact of task-based teacher training on the classroom teaching of two native-speaker English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). The data are drawn from a 30-hour teacher training course offered to the ETAs who taught in two different government schools in Hyderabad, India, as part of the United States India Education Foundation’s Fulbright Fellowship Programme. The training offered to the ETAs consisted of eight modules: teaching vocabulary and grammar, developing listening, speaking, reading and writing and classroom management and lesson planning. Training was offered through tasks, responses to prompts, and case studies. It also included analysis of critical moments that emerged from the everyday teaching of the ETAs. Constructs such as teacher decision-making (Borg, 2006), critical reflection (East, 2014) and pre-service teacher mentoring (Gardiner 2017) have been used to build the theoretical support for the study. A Challenge-Input-Implementation (CII) model is developed to interpret and analyze the data. The data are gathered from three tools: a) reflective journals of ETAs which recorded pertinent issues that emerged from their everyday teaching and possible solutions to these; b) trainer’s field notes that identified critical areas from lesson observation and post-observation conferences; and c) cognitive information sheet which documents ETAs perceptions of how their learning from the training impacted their teaching and what they would like to explore further in their future teaching careers. Findings revealed areas where trainees needed more support (e.g., class control), as well as the strengths that they have developed in instruction delivery (e.g., the ability to make the class interactive).

Assessing Reflection as a Tool of Female Teacher’s Professional Development in Saudi EFL Post-Observation Conferences

This qualitative study investigated the effect of Saudi EFL post-observation conferences on female teachers’ professional development through assessing teachers’ reflection. It also examined to what extent these conferences are considered reflection-enhancing. Moreover, it contributed towards filling the gap in the literature regarding this area because of two reasons. The first is that there is a paucity of research on functional and thematic analyses of post-observation conferences either internationally or in the Arab world. The second is that most studies conducted in this area have only been surveyed. The sample consisted of 30 Saudi EFL female participants divided into 10 supervisors and 20 teachers. They voluntarily recorded the post-observation conferences conducted by them in Saudi schools in Riyadh region. Two analytic systems are used to analyze the recordings: a functional analytic system and a thematic one. The findings showed that post-observation conferences do not contribute towards enhancing teachers’ reflective skills as a key element of teachers’ professional development.

All it Takes is One Click to Join Me on a "Meet": The Positive Impact of Technology on Peer Observations in the Virtual Learning Environment

Physically stepping foot into the middle and high school classroom is the opportunity teacher candidates (TCs) look most forward to as they enter their final year in our middle and secondary teacher preparation program. It is in this internship year when TCs practice the theory they have learned and start making their own pedagogical choices. The internship year and its experiences are recognized by AMLE Standard 1: “Middle level teacher candidates understand, use, and reflect on the major concepts, principles, theories, and research related to young adolescent development and use that knowledge in their practice” (AMLE, 2012). The question I faced with the arrival of COVID-19 and the shutdown of in person school this past spring and fall as a teacher educator (TE) was this: How will I be able to provide these valuable moments of professional growth for my TCs if they are not in the buildings? The following description presents fellow teacher educators with my response to this question. I describe the creation of virtual peer observation experiences and in-real-time peer coaching that occurred in the virtual internship. Additionally, I describe the impact this process had on virtual post-observation conferences. Keywords: Virtual, Peer Coaching, Teacher Candidate, Observation

Assessing Reflection as a Tool of Female Teacher’s Professional Development in Saudi EFL Post-Observation Conferences

Assessing Reflection as a Tool of Female Teacher’s Professional Development in Saudi EFL Post-Observation Conferences