 My talk is not going to give you any ideas, tips or suggestions on activities that you can use in class. Instead, I'm going to get you to rethink about what's going to come out of your mouth in post-observation feedback. So first of all, I assume everybody here has been observed at some point. Yes. Okay. Is there anyone here whose role of duty is to observe teachers? Please leave the room. No. No. No. I'm here to both parties. Now, can you just quickly tell me one or two questions that have been asked at post-observation feedback dialogues, or that you have posed as an observer? Anyone? One question. Yes. What do you think that went on your end? Thank you. Anything else? How did it go? How did it go? Okay. There we go. So how do you think that went? Do you think you achieved your objectives or learning outcomes that earlier Maureen said can be quite contentious? What would you do differently? Why? What would you do again? Why? What targets would you like to set for your next observation and your thinking? Next observation. Okay. So what are the problems with these questions? So how do you think that went? I think it went well. I think it went okay. But, okay, what would you have done differently? Do you think you achieved your objectives? I think so. But, okay, what would you do again? What targets would you like to set? Really? I have to think now about my next observation. Okay. So some of the problems with these questions is that it's obvious that if something went well, you're going to do it again. And if something did not go well, you're going to think about how it should have been done. Okay. And as we know, whether you achieved your learning outcomes or not, that's contentious between you and the observer. Okay. And sometimes you can't come to an agreement. And I think that this kind of feedback does not really explore commitment to reflection, explore teacher beliefs or theories that underline practice. Okay. Most teachers tend to focus on the negative. And that is because self-criticism is a safe place to be. It helps you to soften the blows. If you are already tearing yourself apart, then the other person you hope is going to be kind. Okay. All right. So at the end of the day, I feel that teachers are merely giving lip service. One of the teachers whom I observed actually told me, I'm more interested in what you have to say. I think that's more important. And actually I think that's very sad because I think what they think about their teaching and what they say about their teaching is much more important towards reflection and teacher development. So I started thinking about feedback dialogues when I was a teacher trainer in Dubai. I was training novice teachers, ESL, AFM teachers in something like a PGCE program. The course length was 36 weeks with 18 weeks of teaching practice. Not all at once. It was broken up. And we were supposed to observe them, I think, minimum five or six times in that 18 weeks of teaching practice, perhaps more. So I became really interested in feedback dialogues. And these teachers were all going to teach ESL or AFL in government secondary schools in Dubai. So they were novice trainees. So I went and did some reading. And at that time what came up was Montgomery. And he came up with three types. One was ESL, where the evaluation is told to the teachers and then the teachers are persuaded to change, adopt or implement certain strategies. Tell and listen. So that's quite top-down now, tell and sell. Tell and listen, evaluation is still told, but there's a bit of room here for them to respond, seek clarification, or maybe even disagree. And then problem solving. Here problems and issues are identified and then there's a bit of room for negotiation, where the observer and the teacher can negotiate. But this also focuses on the negative because of the word problems and issues. And many of the problems and issues remain unresolved. So what I did was I started recording, audio recording myself, giving feedback with my students with their permission, of course. And they agreed. And most of the time it was interesting for me when I went back and listened to them because I also started by asking, so what do you think? How did you think that went? And they always said, I think it went well, but. Okay? And I think the problem here is that because my trainees were always trying to guess what I was thinking and that's where they wanted to reach. So... Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous. So I'm just, I'm forgetting what I'm going to say. All right? So, and what I also found that not just something that went well, but they ended up talking about one event or one incident in their lessons. Now, most of the time it would be negative, sometimes positive, but these recordings revealed that to me that they were talking about this one incident. And even if I ask a question about something else they will come back to this one incident all the time. So then I thought, that's interesting. And another reason why I recorded myself was because I wanted to make sure that I'm not doing these three things. And I wanted to develop my techniques as a supportive mentor. That was very important for me personally. And also because my family keeps telling me that I'm not a good listener. So I wanted to make sure that I was a good listener. Yeah, my husband has not applied for judicial separation yet based on those grounds. But there's always hope. Okay? Okay. So that's what I'm going to do. Okay, so this is an abstract from with one of my trainees. NT is mentor teacher and ST is my student teacher. Have a quick look at that. That's just the beginning. Okay. Immediately negative. I think my instructions need to be clearer. And then after that he himself started talking about this crossover activity. I didn't ask anything about that. He strayed away and he talked and talked and talked about that. It was brilliant because he talked about the amount of time he had spent preparing it. The version was already in the book and he adapted the version in the book. Okay? He talked about how it was difficult for the students. It was a challenge. We needed a little bit too challenging. So the students were struggling with it and how groups were helping each other. Which groups needed more support? Which groups didn't? There was one student who was always asleep in his class. But that student woke up, completed the crossover and went back to sleep. And all this came out. Okay? So what I noticed was that as we were talking about this crossover he was talking about everything that happened before leading up to the crossover and everything that happened after. So we ended up talking about him using code switching in the classroom. Classroom management. Behavioral management. Support from other staff in the school. Access to photocopying. There were so many things that came out of that. So what I found is that by focusing on this one event it revealed so much about his teaching. And interestingly, I also discovered something about my own training techniques. Because at that time the ESL book used in the secondary schools in Dubai was not particularly great. So I found a lot of my training sessions in classes with them during adapting and supplementing resources to help them to use the textbook in class. So he adapted that crossword because he thought it would please me. Isn't that interesting? So that revealed something about my training techniques as well and it made me look back on that. So I went and did some research and readings about these trainees focusing on one incident and I found out, I found the term critical incident. It's been kicking about for a long time now perhaps since the 80s. There are a lot of teacher trainers and people who write about reflective practice. If you were in E.L.T. Islands Plainly, Thomas Farrell's Plainly, he writes a lot about critical incidents as well. But the pioneer really is David Tripp. I'll give you a couple of seconds to read that. What we have to understand is critical incident does not have to be something major in your class. It can be a student asking a question. It can be the teacher forgetting to write something on the board, choosing to write something on the board, talking about something in the book, a picture or something like that that was unplanned. The important thing is that we have to explore it from a more controlled point of view so that we are talking about things that led up to it and things that happened after it. The main problem with this terminology is the word critical because of its association with the word criticism. So that can be a problem. But critical incidents can also be positive and Jeremy Harbour calls these magic moments. And sometimes it's very difficult to steer the teacher to come back to the positive. But that's okay. If they start with negative, eventually as they dissect the incident, they will themselves identify positive elements of that incident. Do you remember my student teacher earlier said, my instructions need to be clearer. Later on he went on to talk about and he realized that actually my instructions were not too bad and actually he monitored the groups very well and actually he supported the groups and encouraged them to try and do it and help each other, not just within the groups but between groups. So there was a lot of good things that came out of his talk. And I think sometimes what we have forgotten is that teaching is an emotional act. It's personal, emotional, it's a highly complex activity. So if we want meaningful reflection to happen, we have to allow teachers to share past and present experiences and share ideas, share fears, thoughts and ideas. So if reflection is the key component of teacher development and teacher education, then I think one way of getting teachers to really deeply reflect is using critical incidents. I use them with my novice teachers. I also use them when I was mentoring newly qualified teachers. And one of the best things that came out of that was that my student teachers, and you believe it or not, when I started changing the way I was starting the observation dialogue where I let them start the observation dialogue and talk and after that every time in between they come for classes, they tell me, when are you coming to school to see me? When are you coming? When are you coming next week? Come tomorrow. Have you ever asked anyone to come to your class to observe you? So I want students. And that's what that did. It encouraged them to come. Now, coming to an end, I think it was Sarah who said, organizations don't change, but people do. I think it was Sarah who said that earlier. So this is what I'm saying. And these are the new questions you can ask instead of how do you think that went. What aspect of your lesson would you like to talk about? Is there in particular anything you'd like to focus on? But if after the observation, the observer still asks you this, so what do you think? Don't say I think. Say this. I would like to talk about this particular part of my lesson because I think it shows something about me and the way I teach. And then don't let them interact. Run with it. And the main problem, I know the main problem here is going to be because at the end of the day, they still have to fill out this huge checklist and this huge evaluation form. I think that still can be done because I think the observer can still put somewhere where they write the overall comment that this assessment is based on a selected incident by the mentee or the observing. And then write the assessment and then agree upon the assessment. No one write critical incident. You know, what I choose as a critical incident might be different from what you choose because you're observing me. That's fine. After I've talked about mine, you can always say, I thought such and such an incident was critical too. What do you think? And that will start another conversation and we can talk about that as well.