Classroom Observations Posted on January 15, 2008 Howard Abikoff (bio) describes techniques to improve the quality of observational data.

When we would do this in the classroom, going back for a moment to some of the other work that we’ve done, the observers who came into the classroom were unknown to the children, and the children did not know they were being observed.

And in fact, what we would often do sometimes is to accommodate the children and habituate them to the presence of an observer. There were times when we would go into the classroom, and for the first one or two visits, although we might be collecting data, we would not use it because we used that as an opportunity for the children to just get used to the fact that there was somebody in the back of the room. And typically the teachers would just introduce this person as someone’s who’s observing what it’s like to teach a third grade classroom.

And if the observers are good at being unobtrusive and of using peripheral vision, we were often quite successful in collecting data in a way that we were fairly certain was not interfering with the children and allowed them to behave in ways that were quite typical.

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