What do Teaching Observers Observe? The Influence of Teaching Observer Knowledge Bases on their Observational Focuses and Feedback

Content-based teaching observations and observation-based feedback are essential components of teacher education programs for training preservice teachers. This is because observers with varying levels of content and pedagogical content knowledge may focus on different aspects of the content during observations and provide diverse feedback. This explanatory sequential mixed methods approach incorporated surveys, observation reports, and interviews to examine how four groups of observers, such as those with biological content expertise, science pedagogical content expertise, pedagogical expertise, and no biological or pedagogical content expertise, differed in the types of observation-based focus and feedback they provided to preservice science teachers. Major findings revealed that there were no significant differences in the median scores for the observation-based focuses and content-based feedback among the four groups. The only exception was that participants with strong science pedagogical content knowledge were more likely to offer feedback on how well the preservice teacher explained the reasons behind biological processes. Additionally, the qualitative analysis showed that participants across all groups provided similar focuses and feedback regarding content accuracy, the quality of content-based instruction, and the use of real-world examples. However, those with content or pedagogical expertise were more likely to identify misconceptions and areas for improvement in preservice teachers’ science teaching than those without such expertise. Furthermore, observers with pedagogical expertise were more inclined to give corrective feedback, while those without pedagogical expertise tended to offer more positive reinforcement. Implications and directions for future research are also discussed.