Saturday, 30 January 2016

The Vital Things To Note Concerning Classroom Walkthroughs

By Walter Barnes


This is actually a trending practice among the most organized and well performing schools in the world. This practice is normally carried out by supervisors or principals or going around the school observing various teacher teachers teaching skills and how good their instruction delivery is. Classroom walkthroughs are now being used as a tool to check performance of particular teachers.

The teachers are reminded of the school motto, mission and goal and asked to teach with respect to them. The commonly used tools in such a process include some clinical supervision, thorough classroom observation by supervisors and ensuring feedback is communicated to responsible persons. The teaching skills of a teacher are basically observed but not with an intention of correcting them but rather assisting teachers improve their skills.

A research done recently actually shows that those high performing schools actively seek to basically establish clear and precise expectation that their administrator will be the primary architect of all instructional improvement and instructional leader of that school. Instructional leadership generally can take several forms ranging from ensuring only highly quality materials of teaching are available readily, ensuring professional development to modeling lessons and conducting formal observations.

When the skills of a person are improved, the quality of service they deliver or offer significantly improves and students under their care perform well. Due to the completion that exist between schools, principals are now willing to embrace walkthrough with an intention or aim of improving the overall school performance.

The school administrator gets a brief glance of schools instructional program and it current status. The reason why such exercises should be conducted includes the following. First is getting administrators into classrooms. The second reason is to bleach the gap between the teacher and principal. This is done through the frequent dialogues the supervisor does with the teacher.

This practice though is supposed to be distinguished from the common formal evaluation processes for teachers. The technique focuses mainly on engaging teachers or other teaching staff in a dialogue and generally reflecting on teaching practices and also reflecting on school wide goals. The lecturer usually benefits by basically learning how reflection can be used to improve or increase ones knowledge, performance and skills.

Some of common characteristics that are visible from these exercise are, the exercise is quite short around 2 minutes each, they are often not announced, follow up does not occur immediately and they are followed with a report being generated. The objectives include improving learning and teaching and identifying other components available in various models.

There are those teachers that actually dislike the process considering it as being degrading and intimidating. This is a wrong perception of the process as it main goal is to only improve how a person does things or approaches things. The teachers though should be made aware of the benefits associated with the practice. Famous scholars and authors who have largely contributed to this practice include Sather E, Susan, McNeely Marguerite and Lawrence Hayden.




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