Observing your lesson in our program review

A member of our specialist team has contacted you via SMS about observing your ethics lesson as part of the Primary Ethics observational program review. You should have received an email about this last week. In response to that email, you’ve told us what topic and lesson you’ll be giving this week – if anything has changed, please let your observer know that now.

Your lesson is one of 80 across 80 schools and all stages that are being observed this term. The specialist observation team has four members, all experienced ethics trainers – Kelby Mason, Rose-Anne Manns, Margaret Widjaya and Jenny Curtis. One of these four has contacted you.

Your observer will meet you at the school office 10 minutes before your lesson begins so that you can lead them to the classroom. They won’t take part in the lesson but will set themselves up away from the ethics circle, where they can easily see and hear.

It’s important to emphasise that this is not an individual teacher assessment, but an observational study across the whole ethics program. However, if you are interested, your observer will be happy to provide feedback and share a few tips after the lesson. They will also be interested in your feedback about the ethics program and how it works for you and your class.

If you aren’t able to teach this lesson for any reason, please reply to the SMS to let the observer know. Or ring our Helpdesk on 8068 7752.

Thanks for your ongoing contribution as an ethics volunteer.

SOME FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR PROGRAM REVIEW

Why was I selected?
Lessons and teachers have been selected to ensure we have a representative sample from across a number of categories, such as years of experience, whether you attended online or on-site training and what stage you teach. Once we grouped all active teachers into these categories, we also considered factors such as where schools are located and the day and time of the lesson.

What’s in it for me?
This is your chance to contribute to the continuous improvement of the ethics program simply by being you, doing what you normally do and by sharing your observations with us. After the class, you are welcome to ask the observer to briefly share some of what they observed, if you would like some pointers.

What should I do if I don’t want to be observed?
It is important that we observe all the teachers selected so that we get a representative sample. We understand that having an observer in your classroom could make you nervous. However, please be assured that we are not assessing your performance and your name will not be associated with the data recorded.

What if having an observer in the room disrupts my students?
Students are used to having other people in their classrooms. Our classroom support team has sat in on hundreds of classes over the years and we’ve found that students are fine as long as they know who the stranger is and why they’re there. So we suggest the ethics teacher introduces the observer by saying, ‘This is X, they’re here to watch our lesson today.’ The observer could say ‘Good morning, class’ and give students a chance to say, ‘Good morning, X’. Then eyes on the teacher to start the lesson.

What will the Primary Ethics observers be looking for?
The observers will be looking for the effectiveness of the approaches and techniques taught in training and what variables make them more or less successful (such as the age of the students or the number of students in the room). We know that not every lesson requires the use of every technique – and that’s fine. We just want to see what happens when they are used so we can check that our training is effective and relevant. We don’t want you to do things differently because an observer is in the room – just teach the lesson the way you normally would.
Observers will also ask you for your feedback on the ethics program – what’s working and what’s not for you and your class. You may want to think about this beforehand so you are ready to share some brief points on the day.

Will observation of my teaching be treated as confidential?
Yes – your name will not be uploaded with the observation data or passed on to others. We are not looking at results from individual teachers.
The only exception would be if a child protection issue were observed during your lesson, in which case your observer would report it to our staff to be followed up.

What will the findings be used for?
The review is part of our commitment to continuous improvement in all aspects of our program, from training to the ongoing support of the thousands of volunteer teachers. We need to know what’s working and what’s not for the students and you the teacher, in the classrooms where the lessons take place.

Findings will feed into future consideration of:

  • Whether the approach and techniques we cover in training are the right ones for the job
  • Whether our training is effective and teachers are able to apply the techniques on the job
  • How we can improve the experience for our teachers and your students
  • The implications for training, classroom support initiatives and curriculum review.

This review also fulfills our obligation to the Department of Education, to conduct regular reviews on the use of our approved curriculum.