 Hi everyone, Ross a teacher talker, I'm posing this short explanation to support this blog post in order to support you or some of the colleagues that you work with if you're talking about teaching and learning and observations. What I'd like to do is to watch this introduction and then watch all the other videos alongside this and then answer some of the questions that I pose. So firstly from me some provocations and our learning walks away some time. Do you reliably observe teachers with your judgments and how do you know your observations lead to teacher development and who benefits from observations. Is it the teacher themselves or the observer. And so I discovered a method for my doctoral research about three years totally transformed the way that I approach lesson observation, and I wish I'd learned it many, many years ago. And the ultimate goal of lesson observation should be to improve teacher performance, not just check in on consistency, or give teachers a hard time so all of us particularly middle and senior leaders out there watching must equip ourselves to observe one another more reliably I mean how many of us have trained in how many of us have a qualification and observing. And so I've discovered this other version what I'd like to do is watch these videos, answer the questions and this is based on an academic approach, which hopefully will elicit more reliable conclusions valid judgments in you. And I thought I knew everything there was to do with lesson observations, coaching and feedback until I discovered how to observe as a researcher, and as a result of this process, evaluating the quality of teaching and learning will improve classroom doors will open and teachers will develop. And I will claim to make but I'm already living this methodology in a large number of schools around the world, this was prior to the pandemic, as well as also virtually during the pandemic. So I'll do my best to describe the process shortly and then I want you to also watch each of the videos and answer some of the questions. So do your observations have any impact. I've conducted many horror stories I'm sure you have to I've designed all sorts of methods metrics spreadsheets, but yeah I don't really know what long term impact it has on individuals. You know I've got a good degree of knowledge in terms of best methods, its impact on standards or teachers but I'm talking here as a whole school, and but also individually in terms of how we learn to observe. And, you know, we don't often get much training. It's often a part of imparted from one to another. And so that the happier schools and I use that word carefully, and gather their teachers together to talk about teaching learning on a regular basis but they share video content of one another to learn to understand complex teaching processes to unpick them and to learn how to reliably evaluate them as well as to enhance their performance. So do you work in a school like that. So I believe learning will serve a purpose, you know monitoring checking on habits displays keyboard keywords to try and develop this consistency but not one school of work with can claim they are consistent in every class why because that balance between autonomy. Sorry accountability autonomy and you know almost pedagogical absence. So how do we get it right and how do we have this impact on pupils should be two fold. I ask I'll just finish with this one ask a room for the teachers hands up who works in a position of leadership responsibility that gives you permission to watch other teachers. You'll see a large number of hands go up in the room. Taking it further you might then ask keep your hands up if you've received any formal training and then you'll see the number of hands tends to drop dramatically. And when you ask if there's anyone left as a formal qualification in observational practice, I mean from maybe a researcher academic point, you're pretty much see no hands remaining. I understand why this is a case but we should then try to do our best with reduced budgets reduce time all those issues that we have in schools to support one another. And, you know, raise the pro status of the teaching profession but also equip us to help us stay in our classrooms to develop happier teaching methods improve teacher well being at mental health and ultimately have a big impact on our kids. I want to change this. I want to reduce observational bias particularly I think this is often influenced by learner walks school inspections visitors those types of things. So how do we improve observation reliability and open door culture so please watch the videos and then I'm four steps to help you change the way that you might approach observations in the future. I hope you find it of use and do let me know how you get on.