Purpose

Since 2019 Manaiakalani, in conjunction with Woolf Fisher Research Centre, have been working on designing the observation tool, based on feedback from teachers and school leaders. This has led to the development of a tool that will allow researchers, facilitators and school leaders to identify effective teaching, large scale trends and progress in teaching practice.

The tool is used summatively in order to identify big picture patterns and trends visible in teacher practice and to highlight examples of exemplary practice that could be shared across the community of Manaiakalani schools. Manaiakalani facilitators are trained to use this tool. School leaders have the option to be trained to do the observations too if they wish, as this will increase the sample size for analysing and producing trend data, as well as adding a more collaborative approach to collecting summative data snapshots. The addition of school leaders to the observation team is based on feedback from principals and school leaders, who have asked both for the opportunity to be trained and upskilled in observing teacher practice, and for the opportunity to contribute to the data set. The analysis of data provided by Manaiakalani will be from a combination of your facilitator’s observations and your school leader’s observations using the Manaiakalani Research Observation tool.

The tool can be used formatively by school leaders within their own schools to facilitate discussion about reading practice observed. The tool can also be used at any time for follow up observations and will not be included in the Manaiakalani observation data.