Observing teachers’ lessons simply to tell them how to teach is a sin,according to one of education’s most influential researchers.
According to TES ( World Network of teachers ), Professor John Hattie, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute and one of the world’s most widely quoted education academics stated: “I think it’s a sin to go into a classroom and tell another teacher how to teach. Because all you do is tell them how to teach like you.”
What’s more, he claimed that 80 per cent of the classroom process lasts unseen and unheard by teacher observers, and only the students are aware of it. “I don’t want to think about the 20 per cent we see. I want to think about the 80 per cent that goes on that we don’t see.” he said.
Therefore, the role of testing, according to him, is not to test pupils’ knowledge, but to test the effectiveness of teaching. He added: “Because tests don’t tell kids about how much they’ve learnt. Kids are very, very good at predicting how well they’ll do in a test.”, TES reported.
