Lesson: Lesson observation (video recording or tracking of the course)

To improve the quality of teaching, you need CPD that works

To impact student achievement, professional development needs to include specific building blocks. 
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) calls these “mechanisms”, and identified 14 of them in a recent meta-analysis. They categorised them in these four groups:

1. 
   Building knowledge
   
2. 
   Motivating teachers
   
3. 
   Developing teaching techniques
   
4. 
   Embedding practice. 
   

The EEF found that the more of these mechanisms PD included, the greater impact on student achievement. They also found evidence to suggest effective PD programmes might be more likely to include something from each category.
Unfortunately, teachers rarely get professional development that includes a range of these mechanisms. In a 2018 survey, only 38% of teachers in England agreed that ‘time and resources allocated to professional development are used in ways that enhance teachers’ instructional capabilities’. 
Many of the PD experiences outlined above have something in common: they need observation and feedback. 

Observations are powerful, when done well

Unfortunately in UK schools, lesson observation tends to be infrequent, inconsistent, and tied to performance evaluation. 
Many teachers only get feedback on their teaching through mandatory lesson observations. These are usually conducted by a headteacher or a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). 
There’s a lot of data highlighting how ineffective these observations are. And, educators agree that they’re not working.
According to a SmartBrief poll:

• 
  70% of teachers reported that traditional observations don’t give the meaningful and actionable feedback they need. 
  
• 
  62% of school leaders acknowledged that the evaluation systems at their schools are not effective in supporting their teachers' development.