ABSTRACT
In Britain in the late 1960s analytical approaches to the study of classroom processes were little known and, indeed, this gap in professional awareness was the main reason for the publication in the early 1970s of a book whose aim was to bring the work that was going on to the attention of British educationists working in the field of teacher preparation (Stones and Morris 1972b). The same global approach was to be found in the way in which supervisors approached their task. Whatever the nature of the advice given informally to students during the course of teaching practice, institutions by and large trafficked in generalities, so that student teacher assessment following practical teaching would as likely as not be of the nature of a ‘pen portrait’ commenting on the student’s performance. An example of the genre might read: ‘Miss X has largely followed the existing regime in the classroom and consequently her work has been less ambitious and imaginative than one would like…she has raised the standards of the children’s writing…’ (Stones and Morris 1972a). The survey from which this example comes was conducted in 1970 and found that at that time few institutions used analytical rating scales. Since then there has undoubtedly been movement towards a more analytical approach to the appraisal of teaching by supervisors and a great increase in
the use of schedules for assessment of teaching using analytical categories. (See McCulloch 1979.)
In view of the fact that Sidney Morris and I argued for the development of an analytical approach to the examination and appraisal of practical teaching, it would be churlish not to welcome this change. However I do not think the way things have gone is an unmixed blessing. ‘Discovery’ of the approach was followed by its fashionable adoption, and often the schedules were more impressive as to form than content. The undoubted benefit has been to explicate the perceived main aspects of criteria of teacher competence so that they can be scrutinized and discussed. However, some have embalmed the trivial and the cosmetic, and if these become narrowly specific and prescriptive on supervisors, the net effect could well be to produce a system worse than before. The types of problems attached to some of these schedules are twofold. On the one hand many of the items are ill defined categories that are at times vapid to the point of vacuousness. On the other hand many of the less vague ideas are mere encapsulations of conventional wisdom, checklists of tips for teachers with little or no relation to pedagogical theory or concern for children’s learning, a question I have already discussed in earlier chapters.
