My professional practice often has me thinking about the ‘observation-theory’ relationship, particularly in light of post humanism that alerts us to the language we use, and the language we reject. These reflections also bring to mind how Popper used to say ‘observation is always observation in light of theories … conventionalism is a system which is self-contained and defensible’. So on the one hand there is the rightful need for accountability within a system that is self-contained. Then on the other hand there is the justified demand for innovation and creativity that necessarily lie outside these systems. How does the practice of teacher observation reconcile these tensions?

Professional action is at the forefront of the agenda of education at the moment and professional action needs to be justified and defended. There is a case made by some that nothing should be left to chance. But many commentators are punch-drunk on myth-busting, fad-smashing and having an epiphany about the fact that were led up the garden path and were wrong. They critique the part without addressing the whole. As Ball states (2015), we need to question the ‘necessarian logic’ espoused by policy entrepreneurs, so-called ‘experts’ and those that create the murky swamp that is a business-like or medicalised view of education and ‘what counts’ and ‘what works’. It is made all the more problematic when professional associations are prone to mergers and adopt a myopic view of what teaching can and should be visible as, even what education should be.

My professional practice and work with coaching partnerships suggests Australian Professional Standards for Teachers are not able to address these tensions. There are others who feel the same.

What really grabs me is the emphasis placed on the complex business of observing for the purpose of determining the quality of teaching. All Teachers have at some point engaged with some kind of educational theory and educational research on learning. There are bog-standard positions floating around at conferences and across edutwitter about ‘proxies for learning’ and also about the problematic of observing – but this seems to be predicated on naming and noticing desired observable features of lessons as measured by some version of student action or outcome. We then tend to ascribe some performative judgement about effectiveness with a side-dish of feedback and advice about ‘how to actually do it’ – corrective action if you will. Of course, we have our gaze fixed on the learning, but correcting the professional action of teachers.

For me this is problematic and lays bare gaps in the observation-theory relationship. If we are consumed by the essential need to use scientific approaches to teaching and student learning, how then do we control for the invariant element, the students? This might bother those who lean ostensibly on science and evidence to design out inconsistencies or the possible problems with not seeing what was intended. The language we use to describe anything that cannot be qualified or quantified seems to be rejected. Do we really want the privilege of observing colleagues to be reduced to a process of technocratic solutions and one-off judgements over a mosaic of practice over several episodes and dialogue about reflection leading to growth? There is a risk of an unacknowledged shift from ‘input legitimacy’ (values and purposes) to ‘output legitimacy’ (standards and performance) (Ball, 2015) at the expense of professional agency because of the educational ‘impatience’ to get results (Biesta, 2015).

I have a problem with a direct ‘just tell them’ approach to feedback on teaching, especially when it is either discipline or professional knowledge that is the subject in question. Teaching is an object of study that is complex and multi-faceted. Criteria of validity seems insufficient but also pre-ordained, thus stultifying the right of a teacher to research and professionally form iteratively. If observing teaching is about studying the phenomena of learning, then technical control of the process is surely the focus of observation. However, if we lean ostensibly on cognitive science to help us understand and plan for successful predictions of learning, do we have complete certainty? I am not uncertain.

So there might be an empiricist relation between the language of observation and theoretical language of practice, but there needs to be a reflexive relation between the two in order to explore the potential of practice. Conventionalism eschews uncertainty, but teaching is not that simple and neither is categorising teachers according to how conventional they are. That is also not right. Professional action operates in the domain of the variable not the eternal. That’s because we are working with people, not inanimate objects which can be manipulated to suit a desired outcome.