Observation Skills for Effective Teaching

The sixth edition of Observation Skills for Effective Teaching focuses on observing others and incorporating the right tools, knowledge, and skills into your own practice — key principal means by which you can become an effective and professional teacher.

Using this text, you will learn to observe in the following eight areas: learning climate, classroom management, lesson clarity, instructional variety, task orientation, student engagement, student success, and higher thought processes. These eight areas have been found by researchers to be related to desirable cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes in learners. This book will also teach you how to decide what to observe, how to effectively and efficiently observe in the classroom, and how to apply what you have learned through observation to grow as a reflective teacher. In addition, the book provides methodological concepts, observation instruments, and dialogues designed to help you see and practice research-based patterns of effective teaching.

Gary Borich grew up on the south side of Chicago, where he attended Mendel High School and later taught in the public school system of Niles, Illinois. He received his doctoral degree from Indiana University, where he was director of evaluation at the Institute for Child Study. Dr. Borich is professor of Educational Psychology and a Cissy McDaniel Parker Endowed Fellow in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin and past member of the Board of Examiners of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Dr. Borich’s other books include Effective Teaching Methods, Seventh Edition; Educational Assessment for the Elementary and Middle School Classroom, Second Edition (with M. Tombari); Clearly Outstanding: Making Each Day Count in Your Classroom; Becoming a Teacher: An Inquiring Dialogue for the Beginning Teacher; Educational Psychology: A Contemporary Approach, Second Edition (with M. Tombari); Educational Testing and Measurement, Ninth Edition (with T. Kubiszyn); and The Appraisal of Teaching: Concepts and Process; and Teacher Behavior and Pupil Self Concept. Dr. Borich lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Kathy, and children, Brandy and Damon.