Being a Reliable Observer

Eyeglasses and the word See, with a photo of four early childhood education students in a classroom

Points to Consider

What opportunities do students have to become reliable observers of their own practice and that of others? This is a discrete skill that needs to be scaffolded and can be supported by providing the following:

Multiple viewings of video models reflective of the desired practices and content knowledge
Practice analyzing videos using various lenses (e.g., teacher-child interactions, child development)
Opportunities to reflect on how one might implement a practice oneself
Interactive quiz with video

This is where knowledge and teaching practices begin to come to life. Educators need to be able to accurately see effective teaching in themselves and others, and providing them opportunities to view their own and others' practice offers invaluable opportunities to hone those skills. This can also further confirm the link between the identified competencies and practices and the content knowledge. Learning how to analyze practice in action can make those links explicit and visible.

By watching practice repeated multiple times with the same and different focuses (e.g., early math practices versus emotional literacy practices), educators can slow down and stop the action and start to parse out the various elements of the "blooming buzzing confusion" of the classroom (Sherin & Star, 2011, p. 69). This helps teachers plan and consider the specific practices they may want to implement.

Scaffolding the activities can help identify what teachers already know and help them extend their ability to be reliable observers (you may start with "What's going on in this video? What do you see that tells you that?" and move to "Using video time stamping, identify [insert specific practice] and child response").

Here you can identify what practices you want students to see and how you want them to implement the practices. This is also an opportunity to have students see the outcomes of the practices when they are able to identify and discuss how children and families respond to various practices.

Again, you can identify the specific activities you will use to have them demonstrate their reliability (e.g., video analysis, time stamping videos) and understanding (e.g., making the link between what teachers are doing and how children are responding).

Later modules in this course will provide resources on how to use video that will help you plan and enhance the opportunities for "seeing." Identifying sources for video examples is also useful. The Media Library available through EarlyEdU Alliance is one resource you may want to consider.