ABSTRACT
Whether you are a student on teaching practice, a college supervisor or a research worker, whether you are young or old, male or female, who you appear to be to the inhabitants of the school will influence their response to your presence and the kind of image of themselves and their situation that they share with you. What you see in a school as an observer is partly a function of how the school sees you. The observer’s view, like the participant’s, is always partial. Observers who think they have access to the springs of objective knowledge, who feel themselves to be the only people who know the ‘truth’, are likely to be on shaky ground. This ground rule of observational research has important implications which will be different for the researcher, the supervisor and the teacher.
