Madeline Hunter on Pre-Observation Conferences (an Oldie but Goodie)

(Originally titled “Let’s Eliminate the Pre-Observation Conference”)

In this provocative Educational Leadership article from 1986, instructional guru Madeline Hunter said, “The pre-observation conference is a vestigial organ remaining from the days when observation of teaching was a ‘fuzzy’ activity, depending on the intuition or bias of the supervisor… Today, with our knowledge of cause-effect relationships between teaching and learning and of the way formative evaluation increases teaching effectiveness, it is time to discard the time-consuming pre-observation conference.” Hunter defended her iconoclastic position as follows:

• Teachers should know at the beginning of the year the agreed-upon criteria for effective teaching. 

• Trust and support result from what happens in the post-observation conference. “The observer who shows empathy for the teacher,” said Hunter, “by understanding the tremendous complexity of successful teaching, seeking the teacher’s reasons for actions rather than proceeding on unfounded assumptions, appreciating and identifying productive teaching skills, refraining from imposing his or her own style on the teacher, and enabling the teacher to continue to grow in teaching effectiveness – will be welcomed back to that teacher’s classroom.” 

• An observation requires interpretation of each part of a lesson in relation to what came before and after. “Viewed in isolation, no technique can be interpreted as productive or destructive,” said Hunter. “There are no absolutes in teaching.” 

• The pre-observation conference builds bias in both teacher and observer. “Having already told the observer the plan,” said Hunter, “the teacher may proceed to develop it even when data emerging from the class indicate a change should be made.”

• The time required for the pre-conference reduces by one-third the time available for observation and post-conferences. 

Hunter believed that planning lessons with teachers is a good use of administrators’ time. The teacher gets the benefit of collaborative planning, and the administrator “accepts part of the teacher’s daily responsibility for planning, teaching, and evaluating countless lessons and experiences the fact that ‘it ain’t all that easy.’”

“Let’s Eliminate the Pre-Observation Conference” by Madeline Hunter (1916-1994) in Educational Leadership, March 1986 (Vol. 43, p. 69-70), no e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #464