IN-SERVICE EDUCATION AND TRAINING (INSET)

IN-SERVICE EDUCATION AND TRAINING (INSET)

1. INTRODUCTION

Observing a lesson and providing feedback in the spirit of support is the best means to help teachers improve their teaching skills. Lesson observations in general are used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching skills of teachers. School Based INSET (SBI) and Cluster Based INSET (CBI) are good occasions to observe lessons and thus the Ghana Education Service (GES) has been promoting schools' organisation of SBI/CBI by the Nationwide INSET Programme since 2008 for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of basic school teachers. The GES provided the "SBI/CBI OBSERVATION SHEET" as a tool for observing lessons in the INSET Sourcebook Module 3 (3rd edition) published in 2008. Based on the feedback from both district level users and school level users of the sheet, GES has upgraded it to the "SBI/CBI LESSON OBSERVATION SHEET (LOS)". The LOS is a tool for anyone who observes lessons at basic schools (DTO, CS, DMT, DTST, Head teachers, Teachers, etc) to assess the lesson easily and to provide feedback (comments/ advice) appropriately to teachers to improve their teaching skills. This booklet is a guide on how to use the LOS.

2. FEATURES

The LOS has unique characteristics as follows:

A. High Reliability of Lesson Evaluation

Some may rate a lesson excellent, while others rate it poor. Some may stress the importance of lesson plans while others may not. To make lesson evaluation have higher reliability, ratings from evaluator(s) must be the same or at least similar so that everyone can accept the rating. For this purpose, the LOS provides a clear definition of teaching skills and levels as follows. 15 Observation Items in 3 categories

The LOS provides 15 observation items so that each evaluator uses the same observation points. These are classified

into three categories: I) Instruction

Planning Skills (Lesson Plan), II) Teaching Methodology and Delivery and III) Classroom Organization and

Management. The 15 observation items

in 3 categories are shown in the table to the right.

5-Scale

Performance

Indicators

With

Clear

Definition (Criterion) of Each

Observation Item

Category I. Instruction Planning Skills

II. Teaching Methodology and Delivery

III. Classroom Organization and Management

Observation Items 1. Objectives 2. Core points 3. Teacher Learner Activities 4. Use of Teaching and Learning Materials 5. Use of Language 6. Use of Generic Skills 7. Use of Chalkboard 8. Questioning Skills 9. Feedback to Pupils 10. Use of TLMs 11. Pupils' Participation 12. Use of Teacher Learner Activities 13. Evaluation of Lesson

14. Classroom Setting 15. Class Control

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Each observation item will be rated by performance indicators on a scale from 1 to 5: "(1) Poor", "(2) Needs Improvement", "(3) Satisfactory", "(4) Good" and "(5) Excellent". As the scale increases, the lesson/teaching skills tend to be more Learner-centered. For example; "(1) Poor" implies a typical "Teacher-centered" lesson whereas "(5) Excellent" implies a typical "Learner-centered" lesson. Each observation item has specific "Criteria". "Criteria" is a kind of standard for judging the level of teaching skills. The criterion of each performance indicator defines the specific state of teaching skills which help users to measure the level of teaching skills objectively and reliably when lessons are evaluated.

B. Systematic Structure

The LOS has systematic structures such as "observation items", "performance indicators" and "criteria" as shown in the diagram below.

TeacherCentered

Performance Indicators

LearnerCentered

Observation Items

Criteria (Criterion)

This structure helps evaluators to find observation points easily, assess teaching skills objectively

and identify the teacher's level reliably. For instance; when you want to evaluate teachers' generic

skills, you would first find it in the observation item list in the left column. Then you will see the 5

levels of criterion for each of the performance indicators as follows.

Observation Items

6. Use of Generic Skills

(1) Poor

Teacher does not make use of generic skills.

(2) Needs Improvement

Teacher makes use of generic skills that are not related to pupils' learning activities and lesson objectives.

(3) Satisfactory

Teacher makes use of generic skills related to pupils' learning activities and lesson objectives.

(4) Good

Teacher puts pupils' knowledge of generic skills into practice appropriately.

(5) Excellent

Teacher encourages pupils to acquire the generic skills, and pupils can solve problems with generic skills by themselves.

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C. Empowerment Evaluation for Teachers

"Empowerment Evaluation" is

an evaluation approach

Next Level

designed to help teachers to

evaluate their own performance and accomplish their goals of

Advice

Improved!

teaching. Therefore, applying the idea of "Empowerment

Comments

Current Level

Evaluation"

to

lesson Evaluator

Teacher

evaluation will help teachers to

evaluate their current teaching level and improve their teaching skills to reach the next level based on

the LOS. An evaluator, who facilitates the process and steps of empowerment evaluation, is

required to evaluate teacher's current teaching level and provide supportive comments and necessary

advice to help teachers to improve their skills (Support and Encouragement Approach). Advice

should be provided based on the criterion of the next level in the LOS: for example, if the teacher's

current level is "(1) Poor", the evaluator should give advice based on the criterion of "(2) Needs

Improvement". This is called a Step-by-Step Approach. This step-by-step approach will help

teachers to improve their teaching skills steadily with confidence and motivation (Self-Confidence

& Motivation Approach). Hence, these 3 approaches provide empowerment to teachers for

effective teaching.

The next section elaborates on how to use the LOS for empowerment evaluation.

3. PROCEDURE TO USE THE LOS FOR EMPOWERMENT EVALUATION

When you evaluate a lesson with the LOS for empowerment, follow these three steps.

STEP 1: Evaluate Teacher's Current Teaching Skills Identifying the teacher's current teaching skills properly on each observation points of the LOS is imperative when you evaluate a lesson. The comments and advice in the next two steps will be provided based on the identified skills in this step. When you observe a teacher's lesson on a certain observation item (you will evaluate a single observation item when you are a beginner at using the LOS, but you will be able to evaluate multiple items at once when you acquire more proficiency), compare the observed skill of teachers with the criterion using "(1) Poor" of the observation item on the LOS. If the observed skill is better than the criterion of "(1) Poor", check the criterion at the next level of "(2) Needs Improvement" and continue to find the best described criterion which is suitable for the teacher's teaching skill. Place a tick () on the best described criterion in the LOS. In principle, you would evaluate all observation items and place ticks on the applicable criterion.

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Evaluate all observation items and Tick on all of them

STEP 2: Provide Comments on Teacher's Current Level Based on the identified level of teacher's skill of each observation item you ticked, give comments on his/her current state of teaching skills. If you do not have enough time to provide feedback, select a few observation items for comments in which the teacher needs to improve the most. STEP 3: Provide Advice to Attain the Next Level The prime purpose of lesson observation is to improve teachers' teaching skills, and therefore providing advice on how to improve their teaching skills is more crucial than giving comments in the process of "Empowerment Evaluation". Based on the criterion in the next level of identified teachers' skills, provide teachers with advice on how to achieve the next level of their teaching skills.

When you give comments/advice Give clear and specific comments/advice to teachers. Give supportive and encouraging comments/advice which help teachers to improve their

teaching skills to reach the next level. Don't criticize teachers and their lessons!

4. WHEN TO USE THE LOS

The following are the typical occasions of LOS usage in the 3 stages of SBI/CBI: Pre-Delivery Stage Evaluate "Observation Items" No.1-4. Lesson-Delivery Stage Evaluate "Observation Items" No.5-15. Post-Delivery Stage Give Comments and Advice to demonstrators/teachers based on the evaluation done during pre-delivery stage and lesson-delivery stage.

However, teachers can also use the LOS for themselves in any of their routine activities such as when preparing lessons, evaluating lessons and reflecting on lesson/teaching skills.

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