Danielson Was Never Intended to Be an Observation Tool
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching was designed for professional growth, not as a checklist for evaluating classroom observations.
Key Takeaways
- The framework was designed for growth - Danielson created her framework to support professional development, not high-stakes evaluation
- Observation misuse distorts the purpose - Using it as an observation rubric reduces rich professional practice to checkboxes
- Better tools exist for observation - Brief, frequent classroom visits focused on instructional improvement are more effective than rubric-based evaluations
Transcript
i like the danielson framework but it's been badly misused to evaluate teachers in ways that don't really respect their practice see the original intent of the danielson framework when charlotte danielson first developed it in the 90s was as a reflection framework for teachers to use to think about their own practice and eventually it became so popular that it became the number one teacher evaluation rubric used in North America.
And Charlotte Danielson herself has mixed feelings about that.
I've worked with Charlotte Danielson.
I've spoken with her.
She's a wonderful person and has the absolute best of intentions.
But if you use any framework with bad intentions, with bad assumptions, with bad practices, that framework is going to get blamed.
And I know she has a lot of feelings about the way that her framework has been used.
And I think one of the main challenges that people need to recognize with the Danielson framework is it is not an observation framework.
So if you've ever received a negative evaluation or just like a not very good evaluation with the Danielson framework, you have to recognize that it wasn't designed to be an observation tool because if you look at what is on the Danielson framework, a good half of it is not directly observable.
It's stuff that you know about your own practice as a teacher, but an observer would not be able to see.
They would not be able to witness you doing some of these things, either because they're in your head, they're judgments, they're decisions you're making, or they happen outside of class time, like building relationships with parents, planning, preparing, things like that.
So it's not a very good observation framework, and I don't think we should look for strictly observables when we're trying to evaluate teachers.
It does not make a lot of sense to only focus on what is observable because so much of what matters in teaching is inherently not observable.
It is intellectual work, Danielson says.
It is thinking.
It is decision-making.
It is professional judgment.
And we have to respect that and remember that and not reduce it to merely observable behaviors.