To Observe, to be Observed. Does the act of observation change what you observe?

In yesterday's Blog post I meant to talk about observating and it's value in relation to Experiential Learning, but I got a little sidetracked.

Observation is obviously important to the way we critique and improve our teaching practice, fitting into the Experiential Learning cycle somewhere between Reflection and Theory (Abstract Conceptualisation).  It is near impossible to observe oneself without bias and having feedback from a third party can help identify practice that can be improved.  Good observation will also include discussion about HOW to change practice, making it a positive and improving experience.



The act of watching others teach can also be rewarding giving new ideas on what works, and what doesn't, to improve and inform our own practice. 

However, in particle physics.... there is such a thing as the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the systems.  It is also noted in psychology as the Observer-expectancy effect, where people change their behavior when aware of being watched but also how the researcher's cognitive bias causes them to unconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.

I've been witness to lesson observations, and OFSTED inspections in my role as a TA, and I know that an observed lesson is quite often considerably different to an unobserved one.  Not only does the teacher often change their lesson plan, but the students are also affected, which begs the question; Are lesson observations ever acurate?

In this article by the Guardian's 'secret teacher', he bucks the trend by not adapting his lesson to the demands of observation and is penalised for it. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/feb/02/observations-outstanding-lessons-secret-teacher?INTCMP=SRCH

By switching the seating plan of the class a few days before in order to better the learning of the class, he is observed while the class is still unsettled, and it shows in the observation.  If he had left them where they were until after the obsevation he would have perhaps been marked better, but the students learning on a larger scale would have suffered. 

And so here are the two main issues....

One..... Observation is isolated and microcosmic.  It is done in one class, on one day, and does not neccisarily represent the teaching as a whole.

Two.....With the rise of 'performance related pay' there is an incentive for teachers to engineer the results of observation, making it less about the improvement of general practice, and more like cramming for a test.

So... in general a useful, unavoidable but utterly corruptable part of education.