Welcome to the QUINT Observation Systems Seminars (OBS seminars). This series will discuss classroom observation systems as a tool for understanding and improving teaching quality.
This and upcoming OBS seminars are open for all interested parties. We want it to become a meeting arena for scholars genuinely interested in observation systems and related issues. Therefore we recommend that you join our network by subscribing to the network mailing list. You must confirm your email address in the confirmation email you receive to complete signing up to the mailing list.
If you are interested in presenting your research or have questions, please contact the organizer, QUINT Postdoctoral Fellow Mark White.
Program
In this seminar, taking place on December 5th, 15:00–16:00 CET, Sean Kelly and Gizem Guner will be presenting: High school English teachers reflect on their talk: A user-study of automated feedback with the Teacher Talk Tool.
Abstract:
We present the Teacher Talk Tool, which automatically analyzes classroom audio and provides formative feedback on key aspects of teachers’ classroom discourse (e.g., use of open-ended questions). The tool was designed to promote teacher learning by focusing attention and sense-making on their discourse. We conducted a user study where five English & Language Art teachers used the Teacher Talk Tool in eight classroom sessions. Teachers completed repeated-measure surveys and semi-structured interviews providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of feedback response. Results indicated that the majority of automated feedback was perceived to be accurate and prompted a high degree of reflection, focusing teachers’ attention on the measured talk constructs. This feedback also led teachers to engage in a process of sense-making, linking the measured talk features to classroom processes and contexts. However, evidence of feedback uptake was more limited. Additionally, for this presentation, we will discuss potential differences in discourse features between reading- and writing-focused instructional sessions in a larger sample of n = 127 classroom observations.