Self-observation: the key to teaching

There has been much discussion about professional accountability within the teaching profession. There has been talk of publishing the state examination records of individual schools as a measure of the effectiveness of a school’s teaching. However, such a measure is crude and takes no account of what real teaching is all about: giving students the cognitive and career skills they need, helping students to learn about themselves so that they are able to live peacefully with themselves and with others, and helping students to develop into mature, competent and self-motivated adults. 

Furthermore, certain schools may have a group of students attending from a particular middle-class culture, for example, whose parents are predominantly in the professional career category. In such schools, stimulation, emphasis on academic achievement, motivation and financial resources may be higher than in schools in less advantaged areas.

Certainly, professional accountability becomes expedient when individual teachers and schools are neither personally nor organisationally accountable. Presently, such phenomena are very evident in the political field. My own belief is that the most effective form of accountability is self-observation; this coupled with each school observing its own culture would guarantee a high degree of responsible behaviour.

Self-observation would entail a teacher regularly going through a checklist of behaviours that are the hallmarks of being an effective teacher and determining where strengths and challenges lie. Any shortcomings would provide the opportunity for further professional and personal development. A crucial requirement would be that the culture of the school would accept shortcomings in a positive way and would not make it threatening for a teacher to identify and seek help and support on a particular professional incompetence. There are many teachers who live in fear of judgment and condemnation and are therefore forced to cover up areas of teaching where they are less than competent.

A competency teaching list could include the following:

• Do I like students?
• Do I respect students?
• Do I address students by their first names?
• Am I challenged by teaching?
• Do I respond to failure and success as equal and integral parts of teaching?
• Do I put the emphasis on learning as an adventure and not as a pressure to perform?
• Do I positively correct students’ homework?
• Do I arrive on time for class?
• Do I have definite boundaries around respect for self and others?
• Do I communicate directly and clearly what is required of students in and out of the classroom?
• Do I listen to students?
• Am I firm and do I take definitive action when violations of the rights of teachers and students occur?
• Do I maintain understanding for the student who presents classroom difficulties whilst being clear that his or her problem behaviours cannot be allowed to be sources of violations of other people’s rights?
• Do I seek back-up support when needed?
• Do I liaise with parents at the early signs of difficulties?
• Is my sense of self separate from what I do?
• Does my teaching approach inspire or threaten children?
• Do I accept and celebrate the uniqueness and individuality of each student?
• When under stress do I seek solutions?

The above list is by no means exhaustive and it would be advisable for teachers to devise their own checklist to reflect the responsibilities that are peculiar to their own school setting. Nevertheless, there are common issues that all teachers need to address in evaluating their teaching style; these revolve around

1. Their own sense of self
2. Their attitude to education and to failure and success
3. Their cooperation with management and fellow members of staff
4. Their relationships with students and parents and their response to children’s learning efforts and difficulties.

It would benefit teachers for parents and students to be aware of the above list of responsibilities, so that parents, in particular, could support teachers to meet their obligations. When parents (and students) observe a falling short of what is desirable, it is incumbent on them to confront the teacher and request that the teacher take on the challenges to improving competency. In the same way that an individual student’s emotional and behavioural difficulties cannot be allowed to block or violate the rights of other students and teachers, so too the shortcomings of teachers cannot become a block to students’ learning and emotional and social development. Confrontation is an act of caring and its purpose is not to judge or to blame, but to provide an opportunity for ongoing professional development that can benefit all in the school system, particularly the teacher who is challenged.