Classroom observations can become overly focused on our unconscious bias toward traditional signs of quality teaching and learning. Observers can focus on teaching moves and the appearance of engagement but miss what matters most: are students making sense of the learning. Experienced educator, Dr. Michael McDowell shares the need to “flip” our view in observation to look past surface signals of teaching and learning rituals and perhaps disrupt them.
Read “Flipping the Lens on Classroom Observations With the ‘Inside-Out’ Method” here.
Visit the Hinge Education website and connect with Michael here.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.960] – Steve
Inside out versus outside in classroom observations. Dr. Michael McDowell is joining our podcast today. He is a prolific educational author and the co-founder of Hinge Education, an organization providing professional learning opportunities for educators both nationally and internationally. Dr. McDowell’s experience extends from classroom teacher, academic and athletic coach, to school principal, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and superintendent. I extended an invitation to Michael when I read his Edutopia article, “Flipping the Lens on Classroom Observations with the Inside-Out Method.” I’m looking forward to learning more about how his insights can impact our work with coaching for continuous teacher growth that generates increasing student success. Welcome, Michael.
[00:01:30.390] – Michael
Hi, Steve. Great to be with you.
[00:01:31.950] – Steve
So why don’t we set the stage with just a quick description of inside-out observation and maybe how your experiences as a teacher and a coach and a school administrator led you to be thinking about the inside-out process?
[00:01:52.610] – Michael
I think there’s a couple things that I think about, Steve, when I think about kind of the outside-in approach. So one is, I think it’s just so judgment-laden. So when I think about going into a classroom and I’m going to go watch a teacher teach, there’s just this immediate kind of power dynamic, no matter what role I’m in. So whether it’s a teacher with a teacher, it’s I’m a student I’m a coach, I’m an administrator, there’s just immediately, there must be some kind of judgment on whether I’m doing the right particular types of techniques. And to me, that’s never the type of fertile ground that we want to have to be able to have a productive conversation afterwards on like what worked and what didn’t work. And from a developmental standpoint, from a progressive standpoint, I want to find a way that power is shared, that we’re coming together to learn together. And I think for me, that’s always the place I’m coming into. From a level of observation of, can we come into this to both learn together? I want to learn the great moves, the successful things that you’ve done, and at the same time, I want to be able to provide some, a lens to some of the things that you might not have been able to see that might be able to strengthen that type of conversation.
[00:02:56.950] – Michael
And I think that to me is the key that we have to look at when we go into classrooms. So I would say that’s kind of the impetus of this particular kind of work when we start with, I’m going to watch the teacher and then go to the student. I think there’s just a, there’s a natural sense of they’re judging me. UI don’t think that’s anyone’s necessary, like a fault of someone on their own, but I think that’s just a natural part of am I doing something right or wrong. And as soon as we’re in that kind of dichotomous kind of mental mode, I don’t think great, I don’t think that tends towards goodness. And so I think that’s the idea.
[00:03:27.710] – Steve
Yeah, I’ve historically said almost impossible for teacher evaluation to lead to growth.
[00:03:37.660] – Michael
Yeah, I agree.
[00:03:38.860] – Steve
For growth to occur, or the most growth is going to occur when the person is vulnerable. And making yourself vulnerable in an evaluation setting, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
[00:03:54.970] – Michael
And I would just add, I think the person coming in for that observation also needs to be vulnerable, right? Like, it’s a mutual level of vulnerability. And I think that’s the impetus of why I wrote the article, to say I’m going to come in and I’m going to be looking at what is the experience of students. And a lot of this falls to some pretty significant research that, that I lean on, Graham Nuthall’s work, Robert Coe’s work around proxies of learning, a lot of things that we just can’t see in the classroom that— and also in the article I talk about Dan Lordi’s work of the apprenticeship of observation, where we’ve Wbeen in classrooms like since we were little, like since we were like 4 or 5. And so we have all of these rituals and all these experiences that mask certain things that are happening in the classroom that almost no one can see. So for me coming into a classroom and saying, I’m going to go and kind of lift up the hood and say like, what’s going on in there, knowing you can’t necessarily see it, I might not see some of it, but then we can share out some of that and say like, what do we learn from that?
[00:04:56.260] – Michael
To me, I think it tends towards more effective conversations that can actually not only improve the learning for students and that teacher, but also the person that’s coming into the classroom be like, huh, I wonder what that’s like in my own classroom or in my own school or in my— or across the system. And I think that leads to powerful inquiry, that leads to the kind of growth we want to see.
[00:05:17.160] – Steve
When you and I spoke earlier and kind of talked about doing the, uh, the podcast, you mentioned Graham Nuthall’s, work in the hidden lives of learners. Would you just describe a couple of insights that you, that you took from that that have impacted you?
[00:05:35.880] – Michael
Sure. I was, I would say one of the researchers that probably stopped me in my tracks early on when I was an administrator was John Hattie’s visible learning work. And I read the book, I went, I listened to John Hattie present in New Zealand and when he first started coming to the United States, and he kept bringing up Graham Nuthall’s work, “The Hidden Lives of Learners.” And if you think about the visible learning story, really the prequel is Graham Nuthall’s work. And Graham Nuthall, his fundamental work was, hey, we’ve got all these rituals in this classroom and what’s happening with the lives of learners? And so he put these lapel mics on students’ lapels and just listened to them speak for years and just capturing their experience. And what he found is the majority of the classroom is hidden from us. There’s like 3 worlds that are happening. It’s the social, it’s that kind of the classroom world that we can see a little bit of it. There’s the peer-to-peer world where they’re whispering, where sometimes as teachers we can detect some of it. And then there’s just the world of the student in their own mind that we can’t depict what’s happening in that class.
[00:06:33.590] – Michael
So 80% of the classroom is fundamentally hidden from us. 80% of the feedback that kids give and receive are largely from their friends, and most of that feedback is wrong. So teachers could be doing all this great stuff, and then there’s this other world that’s going on underneath it. That to me was so powerful because like John Hattie’s work was like, well, how do you make that visible from a teacher lens and from, and helping students be able to visualize and detect like, oh, hey, maybe that information that you’re sharing with me is incorrect, or maybe I’ll illustrate for you like, hey, this is where I’m going in my learning. This is where I am. This is what’s next. Like, how do I make that a little bit more visible? I looked at that work to say, what does that mean for me if I’m a coach or if I’m an administrator and I go in the classroom and I’m like, the teacher is doing great things. The question is, are kids with them when they’re doing great things? Because the number of classrooms, Steve, I go in and like, the teacher’s crushing it. Like, if you have like a teacher awesomeness rubric, it’s like tick, tick, tick, right?
[00:07:27.160] – Michael
And I go to the kids, I’m like, “hey, is the teacher clear?” And they’re like, “they’re super clear.” And I’m like, “what are we learning?” They’re like, “I have no idea.” And it’s like, and that to me, that relationship between our teachers doing great things and our students with them is the really interesting tension I want to be a part of. And I think that’s what Graham his work, Dr. Nuthall’s work illustrated for me is like, wow, there’s a lot going on that we could illuminate a little bit of it without judgment and say, hey, these 5 students said your work was really clear and yet they didn’t connect with it. What do you think that means for you? And I think that comes to a place where it’s like, it’s gonna be hidden in my classroom too. It’ll be hidden in my staff meeting, right? Like that to me is the key. And that’s what I think, that’s what Dr. Nuthall really illuminated for me. And that was one of the most powerful shifts for me to think about the way I lead and coach versus the way I did it in the past.
[00:08:21.790] – Steve
So when you’re looking at the Inside-Out method, how do you describe the observer’s role?
[00:08:29.590] – Michael
I would describe it as the observer’s role is to go in and to document the types of things that we can’t normally see. So I’m coming in to talk to students on what I would say are like core fundamental questions that have a pretty high impact on student learning. So number 1, we just talked about. Are students with you when you’re doing the great things that you’re doing? So for me, that’s like the hunt for clarity. Are the students clear? You’re clear as a teacher with a credential or with advanced degrees and all of these things and all the stuff I see up on the walls, likely you are very clear. The question is, are students – are they with you with that level of clarity? And sometimes you can detect that as a teacher, but you also like, you can do the greatest checking and responding to understanding in the world, and 2 minutes later, kids can be like, squirrel, and not be with you, right? So for me, if I’m going in as an observer and I document a little bit of that and said, hey, this is what I noticed, or here’s, you know, I asked 5 students, 3 of them said they understood where we are with clarity, 2 didn’t.
[00:09:29.580] – Michael
What do you take from that? And for me, I’m really interested in a teacher’s interpretation. So for me, it’s like setting up the conversation. It’s giving people the evidence to say, so based on this evidence, what do you take from that? And then I’m coming into it not from judgment, not saying I think this is this means. I’m doing that is to say, I think this will launch into a really interesting conversation that is anchored around something that is high impact for kids that teachers do really care about. I mean, they want kids to be with them, like, as an example. I think that is the core purpose of going in to do classroom observations.
[00:10:05.580] – Steve
So is there a skill set the observer needs to work on developing?
[00:10:11.160] – Michael
Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. So one is – I think one key skill set for us is, do we know what we’re looking for? So what are those things that have a substantial impact? So for me, if I was to create a model around it, it would be: Are kids with you? Are they working as hard as you when it comes to feedback? Are they giving each other consistent feedback, and is it accurate between students? Do students know what to do when they don’t know what to do? I think that would be an interesting place. Are they progressing across levels of complexity? So knowing things, relating things, applying things. Are we— so I think one, it’s how do we capture some evidence around that? I think that would be a skill set. I think a skill set would be a protocol that you can effectively structure the conversation with a teacher. So to me, I go in from the what, like, what do we see from the students? And I’m just documenting that without judgment. Then for me, working with a teacher, it’s so what, what are the inferences from that?
[00:11:05.980] – Michael
What does that drive you to interpret, to understand? And I want to be a part of that conversation so I can help coach into what can we control, what can we not control? What’s small and doable for you? And then going into the now what. So now what for you? What does that mean for you? So I think having a structured protocol, and then the last kind of bucket for me is that you have some norms that you use, some agreements that you use when you’re working with others, but also as a disposition to stay in the middle. So you’re not telling people what to do, right? You’re also not saying go figure it out. You’re in the middle of that tension between knowing and doing. To help those people who are running the work actually be able to implement that. And I think there’s a set of agreements that we use. Like, I’ll give one quick example, and that is when I go into a space where I’m trying to be in the middle between knowing and doing, one agreement that I use is speak like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong. So I’ll say, I think this might be happening.
[00:12:03.340] – Michael
Do you see it differently? And so it’s really important for me not to either just tell you my position. But equally, it’s not helpful if I just give you a question and I have an idea behind here because humans know that. They know that you have an idea and you’re not going to share it because you’re just going to use inquiry to try to drive to that thinking. And humans are just really good at detecting that stuff. So to me, it’s like, speak like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong, focus on interests, not positions, test assumptions. These things I think are powerful – they are powerful agreements to use as a strategy, but they are also a disposition that we need to have as humans to say, I’m not the one that has to do the work, and yet I am a part of it.
[00:12:45.520] – Steve
So what do the teachers have to learn to make the most from this process?
[00:12:52.380] – Michael
I mean, I think part of it is, I think that what a teacher has to be willing to do and to engage in is withhold buy-in and focus on behaving their way into buy-in. Like, let’s try this a few times. And as opposed to like, let me try to convince you of this whole process of inside out. To me, I think trust is forged by doing the work. And trust is really easy to break. But what I wouldn’t do is I wouldn’t spend a lot of time going through like, here’s the whole process. And now we have a rubric right now. Now here’s the 12-day workshop. It’s like, let’s just start with, I’m going to go and I’m going to talk to 2 students. And then let’s come back and like, let’s talk about like, here’s what I noticed from the 2 students. And I could have a teacher being like, well, that’s not a full sample size. It’s like, I’m not talking about the whole class. I’m not judging you. To me, it’s like, I noticed these from these 2 students. What’s your take from that? So that I can get kind of an interpretation.
[00:13:42.980] – Michael
What do you think might be a next step with these 2 students? What do you think this might mean for you? And that gives me a good sense of where is that teacher in terms of their thinking around this work and helping them get to this place like, I’m not coming in to judge you. I’m coming in to talk about the hidden lives of learners and what we can do to actually make sure that we’re more in tune with that particular kind of work to the best of our ability, knowing how hard and how urgent a classroom is and how many moving parts are hidden. How can we bring some of that out to have that conversation? So I think the key for a teacher is to give it some time to let this thing grow. And over time, I think what people will do is they’ll be like, yeah, this was actually a pretty helpful process. But what I wouldn’t do is the opposite, which is, I have to convince people to buy into a whole process, be like, I’m just going to come to your classroom to look at students. I’m not going to look at you.
[00:14:30.290] – Michael
And then I just want to talk about, here are two students, what did you notice from that? I think starting that, to me, is the key to this particular kind of work. Behave your way into buy-in.
[00:14:39.930] – Steve
So as I’m listening to you, I’m trying to figure out— I hear trust is being critical, that you can develop that environment. And I guess the double vulnerability is what caused the growth. Then as I’m listening, I’m trying to figure out how much of this has to be developed by the coach and the principal. And if they leave and a new person comes, can you get this systematized within a building, or is it—
[00:15:12.380] – Michael
I think so.
[00:15:13.080] – Steve
What has to happen for it to become— I guess it’s part of the culture, huh?
[00:15:18.850] – Michael
I think so. So I always go back to Clayton Christensen’s work where he talks about you can’t change a culture by changing a culture. You change a culture by changing the task. His whole idea was that cultures are built on what are routine problems that we’re solving. So what problems we’ve been solving in the past is we need to make sure our teachers are really great at doing the X, Y, and Z. And to me, it’s like, I don’t think that’s the right task. That’s a task of are teachers proficient when we know that really what we’re looking at is the impact of student learning relative to what teachers are doing and seeing, and that that is a growth process, not a proficiency process, in my opinion. There’s obviously things that we can talk about with just like, just general competency, but I’m talking about like 95% of all educators. Really, we’ve got to change the task. The task to me is where are students relative to the great work you’re doing? I’m assuming you’re doing great work. Here’s where the students are. What does that mean for you? So that’s the task. And I think part of it is you have to change that task and then a culture shifts.
[00:16:20.100] – Michael
What I would not do is try to spend a ton of time on like, we’re going to change the culture, we’re going to change the culture. And then it’s like, I’m coming in to watch you. It’s like, okay, well, that’s not going to, that’s not going to really work. The second thing what I would say is, yes, I think what you can do, so going back to kind of those 3 buckets on what are the problems that we’re trying to work, what is the data we’re trying to go after? That makes a high impact. Number 2, using a protocol in which we look at data. And then 3, what are those agreements or norms we use? I think you can systematize that. I think the challenge – when you plug someone new in is that you also have to, over time, embody that work, right? It is not just a strategy. It is not like inquiry to me is not just a method. It is a disposition. I am engaging in my mental space. I am inquiring. And part of someone who is an inquirer also is an advocate. They advocate for certain things.
[00:17:12.090] – Michael
They share ideas that they have, but they’re in that space and they are like legitimately here to— I am not the one with the power. I am here to share power with someone else. And I think that takes time. So yes, you can bring someone in and start to bring in those routines, but those individuals need to take a lot of time to cultivate actually living and breathing that particular kind of work.
[00:17:35.800] – Steve
So how close does it come to what we’re wanting teachers to do with kids?
[00:17:42.220] – Michael
I think it’s very close.
[00:17:44.790] – Steve
That’s what I’m hearing.
[00:17:46.390] – Michael
I love what you’re just saying, Steve, and how you moved it there, because to me, the— I think the fundamental challenge of most education is we think in dichotomies, right? Big pendulum swings, big shifts to I have the power, you don’t have the power. I’m a lecturer, you take notes. And then I’m seeing a lot in the last couple of years of we’re going to put it on kids. Kids are going to figure it out, right? They’re going to go to vertical boards and try to figure out mathematics. We’re going to give them really rich problems and they’re going to figure it out. The kids are like, “uh, I don’t know how to do that.” So hopefully I can be in a group where people work on that. And what’s happened is we like, we just throw power around and every kid knows. You can take that power back as soon as you want, as a teacher. I think we really have to authentically think about what’s that space in the middle. And to me, the space in the middle, and this goes back to like Arturson Shone’s work, this goes to Roger Schwarz’s work where he wrote this beautiful book called, “The Skilled Facilitator.”
[00:18:43.640] – Michael
And he said, this is about mutual learning. We are going to learn together. And I think to your point, it’s when we talk about kids, if you want students to have agency, you need to show your agency as well. Let’s both be agents of learning and of impact. And I think it’s the same with coaching.
[00:19:01.030] – Steve
As we look to wrap up here, I pulled a statement from your article that I thought might be a summary statement. So see if you— how you respond to it. “These observations are not about catching gaps, they’re about clarifying next instructional moves while there’s still time to act.”
[00:19:19.660] – Michael
I think there’s two parts to that. I think for me, the most important thing for educators is looking at things that are small and doable that they can move forward with and not relying on big conceptual remarks, frameworks, rubrics, things like that. It’s like, okay, so given this, what’s a small action that I could go take tomorrow that either reinforces what I’ve done today, or it might be a small shift. And to me, when I’m coaching, I’m not coming in to say, look, all this trust stuff is great, but at the end of the day, what I’m really trying to find out is like where you’re good and where you’re off. That is not the framing that we should be. Now, a teacher might say, I have a gap. That’s what I want to work on. Great. But they might, but it may not be a gap. It may be like, “oh, I’m doing pretty well.” I could still get 1% better tomorrow. And here’s the small shift that I want to make. So my point on that was when we come in, we should not be framing things from a deficit standpoint. We shouldn’t be framing things as like everything is about a gap analysis.
[00:20:14.410] – Michael
Sometimes it is, but to me, it’s like, that’s going to come through the conversation. That’s the power of— it’s a human endeavor, teaching and coaching. And to me, it’s like, something will come out of that. It could be a new venture. It could be, yes, there’s a shortfall. It could be improvement. It could be starting something new. But that has to come through from that observation. That’s the spark. They’re the flame. And to me, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.
[00:20:39.990] – Steve
Closing thoughts you’d like to share before we close out?
[00:20:43.690] – Michael
Well, I mean, a couple things. Steve, I love the way, in this podcast, you brought it to, like, hey, this is kind of like what we want to see with teachers and with students. And to me, it’s like, if we know that the things that have the highest impact in learning would happen with adults or with students, we should see that cascading across any mechanism. A staff meeting should be the same. If whatever a principal is modeling in a staff meeting, you’re gonna see that in the classroom, because that’s the instructional leader. That’s what we should do. And I think that your point around that, I think is key. So I think as people are listening to this, whatever role you’re sitting in, it’s to say, this is the same type of work we should be coming to this with whatever role and in whatever space that we’re in. And so I just wanted to end with like, I really appreciated that perspective and really enjoyed the conversation. This was super fun.
[00:21:29.820] – Steve
Well, I was looking forward to this when I read your article and then even more when we talked in advance, and it’s all lived up to it. Michael, what’s the best way for listeners to be able to follow up with you? I’ll put a link to your article in the podcast lead-in, but if they want to check some of the work you’re doing and bring any questions to you, what’s the best way?
[00:21:57.680] – Michael
Yeah, thanks, Steve. The best way to get a hold of us would be through hingeeducation.org. That’s our website, and you can go on there and you can access the work that we’re doing and the books, the resources. You can also find us at Edutopia. I do a lot of writing with Edutopia, and I’m also on LinkedIn. So if you want to join the network and then we can go back and forth, hose would be 3, I think, easy ways to do that work.
[00:22:20.140] – Steve
Well, I’ll be continuing to follow you, and I’ll put those links in the podcast lead-in as well. Thanks so much.
[00:22:26.780] – Michael
Thanks, Steve. You too. Appreciate it.
[00:22:30.520] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
