This practical text provides competencies that prepare pre-service teachers, student teachers, and first year teachers for classroom observation. The author presents observation skills according to eight areas related to positive outcomes in learners which include: learning climate, classroom management, lesson clarity, instructional variety, task orientation, student engagement, student success, and higher thought processes. Observation skills are combined with patterns of effective teaching practice for each of the eight areas to help students observe what happens in the classroom and use what is learned to improve their own teaching. This book can be used as a companion volume to Borich's Effective Teaching Methods, fourth edition , as a stand-alone text for an observation course taken before or during a methods course, and as a resource during student teaching.
Do you want to begin developing the skills and competencies you need to become an effective, accountable
teacher?
The sixth edition of Observation Skills for Effective Teaching focuses on one of the principal means by which
you can become an effective and professional teacher—by observing others and incorporating the best of
what you see and hear into you own practice.
Using this text, you will learn to observe in the following eight areas found by researchers to be related to
desirable cognitive, social and emotional outcomes in learners: learning climate, classroom management,
lesson clarity, instructional variety, task orientation, student engagement, student success, and higher thought
processes.
This book will also teach you how to decide what to observe, how to effectively and efficiently observe in the
classroom, and how to apply what you have learned through observation to grow as a reflective teacher. In
addition, the book provides methodological concepts, observation instruments, and dialogues designed to
help you see and practice research-based patterns of effective teaching.
New to this Edition:
- Revised! More than 50 revised and updated observation instruments and records create an easily accessible handbook for your first classroom. In this edition these observation instruments have been better formatted for reproduction and classroom use and are now assembled in one easy-to-access place (Appendix B) in the book.
- New! Expanded and updated activities at the end of each chapter, aligned with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) principles, reinforce the important role of research-based teaching practices as they prompt you to learn and practice observing specific effective teaching practices.
- New! Expanded coverage of instructional media and technology and its importance to effective teaching behaviors. For More Information sections now include websites keyed to each effective teaching behavior presented.
- Updated! In addition to updated sections on teaching culturally, linguistically, and academically diverse learners within each chapter, discussions and citations have been added to emphasize the importance of differentiated instruction and what to observe in today’s heterogeneous classrooms.
- New! Additional discussion and references on the social dynamics of the classroom, including reference to the work of Robert Pianta, appears particularly in Chapter 2.
- Expanded! Glossary of Key Concepts provides a convenient reference for reviewing and studying the professional language in preparation for national and state certification exams.
