Called ‘Mahi Tahi’, which translates from Te Reo Māori as ‘we work together as one’, the program at Auckland’s Long Bay College is cultivating trust alongside marked professional growth, while normalising lesson observations as a key means of sharing knowledge and best practice amongst teaching teams.

Associate principal James Heneghan says a few years ago the school’s curriculum and pedagogy team spied a problem in the wider literature on mentoring and lesson observation.

“Observations happen everywhere, but the hunch was that they were performative and they were compliance-driven in many settings.

“What we wanted to do was get to a place where we talk about ‘improving not proving’ at [the college].

“We wanted to make [lesson observation] feel trusting and safe, where it wasn’t about compliance, where it wasn’t performative – to do that we needed something that didn’t really carry any of the baggage that other observation metrics can, and frequently do, have,” he explains.

Peer observation has the potential to do great harm in schools when it’s not done with fidelity, the school leader warns.

“If there are different understandings of what somebody’s purpose is – and we’ve also got the professional identity of a teacher which you need to carry delicately and be mindful of – it’s going into a space where, if they feel that it is a waste of time or it’s a checklist, then you’re damaging the profession, you’re not esteeming your colleague…”

Teachers have a keen radar for any initiative that’s deemed to be a fundamental time waster, Heneghan notes.

“What do we believe teachers really need? Basically, time and space to do things really, really well, and not to have their time wasted.”

Enter Mahi Tahi.

Under the approach, classroom visits:

  • are focused on one class at a time.
  • support one teacher at a time and are no shorter than 15 minutes and no longer than 30 minutes. The time spent visiting needs to be meaningful, and enough for the head of department to have a clear picture of the practices being used. Extended observation increases the stakes for the teacher being observed, with that tension running counter to trust building.
  • are organised in advance and coupled with a conversation about relevant contextual elements about the class. (The conversation about classroom context is important as it reduces misconceptions from the observer about what they see, as well as providing an opportunity for teachers to feel more confident in being observed, having had the chance to disclose potential areas they may already be focussing on in their practice).
  • ensure consistency with post observation feedback, driven by post-observation discussion questions. Classroom visits are followed up within 36 hours with a conversation between the teacher and the head of faculty.

Heneghan, pictured, says context is critical when post-observation conversations take place.

Heneghan says when it comes to building trust between teachers and middle leadership, it pays to “keep it simple”.

“You need to give [teachers] a degree of ownership over what they’re working on, and very intentionally give it.

“[Also it’s about] being mindful of things like power dynamics in lesson observations and post-observation conversations.”

Context is also critical, the leader says.

“We’re also mindful of the space and the place that it’s done in. If I’m a head of faculty and I’ve observed a classroom teacher as part of this, we’re not doing [follow-up discussions] in the head of faculty’s office, we’re doing it in a space in a place that’s going to really be conducive to a supportive conversation – that’s typically going to end up being in the teacher’s classroom, so it’s in their space.”

‘Active listening’ and not applying assumptions is front of mind in post-observation conversations, Heughan adds.

This builds on the work of Viviane Robinson, Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland, who has backed ‘open to learning’ conversations as a cornerstone of trust between school leaders and teachers.

According to Robinson, core skills involved in the mindset include the ability to: describe problematic situations, listen to others’ views, detect and challenge their own and others’  assumptions, invite consideration of alternative views, give and receive negative feedback, and deal constructively with conflict.

This year Long Bay College is embarking on the second year of Mahi Tahi, with a strong focus on the conceot of maximising learning time.

This means honing in on explicit instruction, with ‘I do, we do, you do’ approaches, with transitions and taught routines also aspects of teachers’ practice set to be explored.

“We’re not here to waste people’s time, we want to make sure that they’ve got things that they can apply to their classroom…” Heneghan says.

In March Heneghan presented at ResearchED in Ballarat, where he shared the power of Mahi Tahi and the evidence standing behind it.

“I thought ResearchED was phenomenal, it’s probably one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to – the grounding in research-based approaches,” he reflects.

While schools do need to be responsive to their communities, there’s no need to exist under a rock, the educator says.

“So, we want to be able to support ourselves by being exposed to great ideas, but also by being able to put our ideas out there to share them.

“Because if it’s working here, it might work in other settings.”