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Session 1. Why Observe Each Other: Purposes, Norms and Consent
Objective. Explain the purposes of peer observation as learning for both teachers, agree norms with a colleague and prepare pupils and the visit with consent and confidentiality in mind.
Most teachers can remember being watched by someone with a form. Peer observation aims for the opposite experience: a colleague you trust, a question you set and notes that stay with you. Whether a visit feels that way depends on small decisions made before anyone enters the room. This lesson goes deeper than the key ideas: why the visitor learns too, and how consent and confidentiality protect everyone, pupils included, so that the classroom door can stay open.
Key ideas
Three purposes, none of them a verdict
- The observed teacher learns something about her pupils that is hard to see while teaching, because she is busy teaching. The visitor is her second pair of eyes.
- The visitor learns too: she sees another teacher's routines, tasks and questions and takes home ideas. In good peer observation both people leave with something.
- The school gains a shared language for talking about teaching. What peer observation does not do is rate, rank or report. That is the line that keeps it safe.
How it differs from coaching
- In coaching (course 11.1 Instructional Coaching) one colleague helps another with a goal. In peer observation the two are equals and the roles swap: today I watch you, next week you watch me.
- You do not need to repeat the coaching cycle here. This course adds what peer observation needs: shared norms, one lens, good tools, pupil consent and a school habit.
- Names matter: call it a 'visit' or 'learning visit', not 'inspection' or 'check'. Words set the mood before anyone enters the room.
Norms agreed before the first visit
- Six norms cover most trouble: the observed teacher invites and chooses the focus; the visitor is a guest who does not teach or correct; notes describe, not judge; notes stay with the pair; the visit is returned; either person can postpone.
- Write them in your own words on one page and both sign it. A spoken promise is forgotten by the next timetable change; a page is not.
- A simple test: if the head asked to see your notes, would you be comfortable handing them over? If not, they are written the wrong way.
Pupils, consent and confidentiality
- Pupils notice a stranger at once. Tell them in one calm sentence: 'Ms Malika is here to learn how we work, not to check you.' Their behaviour is usually more natural when they know why.
- Notes use seat numbers or initials, never full pupil names, and nothing about one pupil's family, health or marks leaves the room. Follow your school's rules on informing parents.
- Photos, audio and video need separate permission from the head, the teacher and, where your school requires it, parents. If in doubt, do not record (see session 4).
Peer observation and evaluation
Peer observation
For learning
- Host chooses the focus
- Notes stay with the host
- Roles swap
- No marks
Evaluation
For a decision
- Observer chooses criteria
- Notes go into a file
- One-way
- Marks or ratings
What the visitor learns
A visitor often learns as much as the host. Watching someone else teach a topic you also teach shows you a different task, a different way of handing out materials and a different tone with a tired class. You see what pupils do with another teacher's instructions, which makes your own instructions easier to notice.
To make this learning deliberate, the visitor brings a question of her own, written on the back of her sheet: 'What will I try in my class because of what I saw?' It does not go into the host's notes. This turns the visit from a favour into an exchange, and it is what lets the host feel like a colleague and not a subject.
Consent is more than a signature
Consent means the people affected understand what will happen and could say no. For the host, that is a real choice of lesson and date, and the freedom to postpone. For pupils, it is a simple explanation of why a visitor is there and the promise that nothing about them leaves the room with their name. For parents, follow your school's rules, which may require informing them or asking permission. If unsure, ask the head before the first visit.
Confidentiality has a practical test: write your notes as if the host's head or a pupil's parent could read them tomorrow. Use seat numbers, record what pupils did and said, and leave out remarks about families and opinions about people. The staff room is where confidentiality most often breaks, so agree in the charter not to discuss the visit there.
Examples from the classroom
The question on the sheet
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 3 in Tashkent and invites Malika. Before the visit she writes one question: 'Do my pupils start the pair task within one minute?' Malika watches only that, with a watch. She reports that in the 10-minute slice five of eight pairs started within a minute and three waited for the teacher to repeat the instruction. Dilnoza had expected the opposite.
Insight. A question set by the host focuses the visit and makes the result useful, not threatening.
The note about the family
Scene. Jasur visits Aziz's Grade 7 lesson in Fergana. To explain why one boy stayed silent he writes, 'comes from a difficult home'. Aziz reads the sheet and asks him to cross it out: notes can travel in a folder and a remark like that can follow the boy. They rewrite it as 'Seat 6 did not speak; looked at the desk from 3:00 to 8:00'.
Insight. Notes describe what pupils did, not who they are or what happens at home.
One sentence to the class
Scene. Before a visit in her Grade 8 class in Samarkand during Navruz week, Sevara says: 'Ms Nigora is here to learn from our lesson on cotton farming. She is not checking you.' Two pupils ask whether they may show her the maps they made. The lesson is calm and pupils speak more than usual.
Insight. Naming the purpose in one sentence lowers the pupils' guard and protects the visit.
Common pitfalls
- Treating the visitor as the only learner, so the host feels examined.
- Writing names and remarks about families in the notes.
- Agreeing the charter orally and forgetting it at the first timetable change.
- Talking about the visit in the staff room, where others can hear.
Fits or Breaks? Then Write Your Charter
- Open the Activity Kit: ten statements about a classroom visit. In trios, mark each FITS or BREAKS the norms, and for each BREAKS statement say which norm is broken (15 min).
- Whole group (10 min): choose the two statements where you disagreed most. Ask what a nervous colleague in your school would feel in each case.
- Pairs (20 min): with the observation charter template, write six rules in your own words for a real visit between two of you, including what is said to pupils and who holds the notes.
- Second short activity (15 min): practise the invitation. One person is the teacher who invites, the other the visitor. The teacher says in two minutes what lesson, what question and what pupils will be told; the visitor only asks 'What would make this feel safe for you?'
- Alone (5 min): write your school-based task from the Kit and the date of the first visit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which of your charter rules would be hardest to keep when the school is busy?
- What do colleagues in your school already believe about 'a visit', and where does that belief come from?
- What did the invitation practice show about the words you use?
Reflect
- Think of the last time someone watched you teach. What did you wish they had asked you first?
- Which colleague could you invite first, and what would you want them to look for?
- What is one thing that would make you cancel a visit?
Try it tomorrow
- Write a six-line charter with a colleague and sign it.
- Before your next lesson, decide the one sentence you will say to pupils about a visitor.
- On a spare page, write a question you would like another teacher's eyes to answer about your pupils.
Further reading and links
Peer observation is mutual learning: invite, agree norms on one page, tell pupils why, protect notes and never turn a visit into a verdict.