Peer observation involves assigned faculty members or teacher-mentors who work with new teachers to assess progress and provide guidance after the teaching-observation setting. In peer observation, the mentor will sit in on a class in session and record the teacher's interaction with students and gauge quality of the instructor's performance. For peer observations, the school will provide specific forms the observer must complete during the observation, and those forms serve as part of the new teacher's assessment.
Effective classroom management is vital for continuity in education. Such observation usually serves to ensure compliance of prevailing statutes or to investigate public complaints. Educational administrators carry out classroom managements observations in an informal capacity to observe teacher performance and interaction. Such observations may take place unannounced or prearranged, depending on circumstances. Administrators often meet with the observed teacher thereafter for a debriefing session to discuss educational objectives, style of teaching and student progress.
Scientists, government officials and independent researchers will often conduct observation in a classroom setting upon approval from appropriate school administrators. Sometimes the objective is to collect statistics and data to form the basis of research; in other instances, the objectives is to observe interactions in the classroom to help validate or falsify a scientific theory related to education. Such research observations will require permission at all levels of the education systems, to include the parents of students, teachers involved and school administrators. Topics may include social demographics, gender and ethnicity; understanding educational theory in application or the impact of resources or lack thereof in an educational setting.
Instructional observation helps to ascertain improvement in teaching of a specific subject matter, usually performed by an experienced teacher, administrator or educational researcher. The objective usually focuses on specific challenges related to teaching the subject matter, to address challenges of the individual teacher or observe the impact of introduced changes or applied resources. The observation is a two-step process, before and after implementation of changes, to compare progress, improvement or results.
Special needs observation is crucial in classrooms where special needs students learn in the mainstream educational setting. However, special needs observations may also extend to concerns related to academic decline or disruptive behavior unrelated to special needs students. Usually performed by a teacher, she will record notes related to the individual students or group of students in question and compare those notes to previous observations to help draw conclusions related to academic performance or behavior issues.