A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

10. A critical friend’s notes about your lesson
To explore your students’ or your own behaviour in a 
situation, you can do so by observing the situation yourself, 
taking notes (as in 8. above) perhaps with the help of a 
recording (9. above), or you can ask someone else to 
observe what happens and to share their observation 
notes. 
Asking a friend to observe you is useful because, even if 
you use a recording to observe your own classes, you can 
miss some things because they appear just ‘normal’. Having 
a critical friend take notes about your lesson is good for 
giving you ‘another pair of eyes’, providing a new 
perspective on what happens. 
There are limitations and difficulties, of course, including
the following: 
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Your critical friend may tend to want to judge your 
teaching as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s very important that your 
colleague understands that their role is not to judge but 
to describe, and to support your exploration. Explain to 
them clearly what it is that you are interested in so that 
they focus on that. In order to do this, you can give them 
a set of questions or a list of things to observe in order 
to have a more focused observation.
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Your students (and you, too!) may behave differently 
because someone else is in the room and taking notes. 
One way to overcome this is by explaining to your 
students the reason for your colleague’s presence and 
by assuring them that the notes this person is taking will 
not be used to evaluate either them or you.
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You may have difficulties finding a colleague who is 
available or willing to observe you. This can be a difficult 
problem to solve, but joining a local teachers’ group or 
association or (in some countries) talking to a school 
inspector or adviser, or even head teacher, could be
one option.
Despite all these limitations and difficulties, having a 
colleague take notes about your lesson is still a very useful 
way to get information about your and your students’ 
behaviour in the classroom. Just one good thing about it
is that you can get feedback immediately (whereas it may 
take you some time before you can listen to or watch a 
recording of your lesson, for example). Having a clear focus 
for the observation, as we’ve seen, is very important, and 
you can see a sample observation framework in ‘Extra 
Material’ (no. 2) at the back of this book, which might help 
you in designing your own.

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