ABSTRACT
This chapter describes methods whereby principals and other administrators can create classroom, grade, and departmental profiles of their schools’ learning environments. These profiles can then be used to generate improvement in the management, instruction, and climate of learning environments at multiple levels of schooling. The application of classroom observation techniques to teacher improvement has been discussed before (Stallings and Freiberg, 1991). This chapter extends the use of classroom observation techniques to school improvement. The baseline comparison information contained in this chapter comes from more than ten years work involving the study of teacher effectiveness variables within the context of school climate effectiveness research. Recent applications of the methodology used in these studies to schoolwide improvements efforts will be described in the last two sections of this chapter.
