Background: Many education systems internationally expect schools to participate in continuous instructional improvement programmes. One tool used within these processes is the structured, rubric-based classroom observation, focused on the evaluation of teaching. Such observations are a common feature of formative evaluation systems, teacher…

In response to national and state trends promoting inquiry-based social studies over the last decade, social studies teacher educators at the University of Kentucky revamped their pre-service program to create alignment around the key inquiry concepts of questions, tasks, and sources. Part of the program revision involved the creation of a new…

Once instructional coach Anne Beaton began creating chances for teachers to get into one another's classrooms to observe and learn about different teaching styles, she realized that not only is studying one another's teaching practices as a community essential in serving students, it also lifts teachers up as leaders. Beaton knew she was learning…

This paper applies Dennis' [(2009). "What does it Mean when an Ethnographer Intervenes?" "Ethnography and Education" 4 (2): 131-146] modes of ethnographic intervention to a fieldwork experience of an observed secondary school lesson in England. Ethnographic research raises numerous ethical dilemmas, in the face of which…

This in-depth qualitative case study explores how one social studies teacher implemented teaching Global History for Latino/a English Language Learners (ELLs) in an urban newcomer high school. Using a framework for culturally and linguistically relevant citizenship education, this article seeks to highlight how the teacher discussed, designed,…

Technology is changing the landscape of higher education. As the editors of this special issue have noted, technology has been particularly useful when trying to solve problems. At Texas Christian University (TCU), we employed technology to create a tool that would help standardize the evaluation of teaching while still offering enough flexibility…

Classroom observation is a crucial aspect of any system of teacher evaluation. No matter how skilled a teacher is in other aspects of teaching--such as careful planning, working well with colleagues, and communicating with parents--if classroom practice is deficient, that individual cannot be considered a good teacher. Classroom observations can…

This article develops an expanded, collaborative and structured view of the process of critiquing observed lesson fragments and shows how this process can be used as a model for developing students' understanding and thinking about teaching and learning processes. The authors introduce Carter's (2007) notion of a meta-genre, "[a] way of doing…

New assistant high school principal, Gwen, and veteran English teacher, Anita, disagree on Gwen's approach to instructional leadership. Gwen's focus as a supervisor is on raising student achievement test scores. She prefers to make brief visits to classrooms, and she knows exactly what she wants to see happening during those visits. Anita views…

This article proposes the Teacher Observation Programme for in-service teacher trainees. The program is reflective, collaborative, and builds confidence. It enables teachers to grow in their ability to self-evaluate. Trainees who have made decisions about their own observation, who have created and used their own observational tools, and who have…

This document presents information, in the form of summary sheets, on 54 teacher evaluation instruments. Each summary contains pertinent information about the instrument regarding publishing company, author, criteria evaluated, subject of observation, category dimension, and coding units. The 19 criteria used in the evaluation tests, which were…

In schools across the United States, an increasingly familiar sight is that of professional artists coming together with students and teachers for the purpose of learning in and through the arts. Musicians, dancers, visual artists, actors, storytellers, and others are finding exciting new professional opportunities as more and more schools are…

This paper both reviews results of research related to teacher evaluation and then presents a suggested evaluation format to be used based on these research findings. The research reviewed falls into five general categories: format for evaluation, guidelines for evaluation, criteria for evaluation, problems with evaluation, and definitions of…

Advises principals to back up their impressions of teachers' performance by using three types of documentation: informal (logging incidents and actions during the school year), formal (classroom observations); and summative (year-end, written evaluations of each teacher's overall performance). Sound instructional leadership requires documentation…

One of the main advantages of the naturalistic approach to classroom research is that the observations are of natural phenomena, occuring in circumstances which the researcher ultimately hopes to generalize. Some problem areas are associated with this approach, however. Observers must obtain complete and accurate records of classroom activities…