Trouble and Strife in Teacher Observation

From my earliest foray into Teacher Observation on one side of the desk when I was a budding ELT teacher to my more recent experiences of observing teachers, creating safer spaces for ELT CPD has always been at the forefront of my mind (and heart). I had come from a therapy background prior to be a teacher and so reflective practice ran through me like the eponymous Brighton rock!

This led me into choosing this fascinating area for one of the research areas for my Diploma in TESOL. How can we continue to make Teacher Observation both central to ELT teachers´ on-going professional development whilst maintaining the all-too
important “reflective practice” element, so pivotal to our teacher DNA? The answer, like many things, was at once both complex and simple: take the already familiar (yearly) Teacher Observation process and try to make it better. So this is what I did.

In my talk, I will be sharing some of my findings and my attempt to facilitate a more creative and reflective process by inventing what I call the “BDA Approach”. I will also be posing questions for the audience to get us thinking about what it is to be observed, what it is to observe, and suggesting some ways to truly integrate reflective practice into an on-going CPD programme through Teacher Observation.