Peer observation – How to do it in Early Years

NDNA’s quality manager, Laura Robshaw, explains the importance of peer observations, and offers tips on how to implement them…

Why are peer observations important?

The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project was the first major European longitudinal study of a national sample of young children’s development between the ages of three and seven years.

The main findings of the EPPE research in relation to adult-child interactions included the following observations.

The quality of the interactions between children and staff was particularly important – where staff showed warmth and were responsive to the individual needs of children, children made more progress.

More sustained shared thinking (SST) was observed in settings where children made the most progress. This occurs when two or more individuals work together in an intellectual way to solve a problem, evaluate an activity, extend a narrative, etc.

Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop the understanding. SST is most likely to occur during one-to-one interactions and focused group work.

Where open-ended questioning and adult modelling skills were observed, children made better cognitive achievements.

The most effective settings had an equal balance between adult-initiated and child-initiated activities.

What are the benefits of peer observation?

Peer observations help assess and develop the quality of adult-child interactions in your setting. In order to improve quality, peer observations should feed into your supervision and appraisal system and inform action plans and training needs.

You can also use them as part of your wider organisation’s quality improvement processes. All practitioners should be involved, including the management team.

How should we conduct observations?

There are a number of different forms and tools that you can use for peer observations. NDNA’s publication, Peer Observation – Developing Skilful Practitioners, uses set questions which you can adapt to suit your setting.

The process involves dedicated time to watch what happens when practitioners and children are together. After watching an activity for five minutes, the person observing answers questions which rate the quality of the adult-child interaction. There are two simple rules to observing:

• Be discreet – position yourself close enough to the group to hear them talking, but not so near that you distract the children.
• Be objective – answer the questions only on the basis of what you actually see. It may feel uncomfortable if the score is low, but the purpose of doing this is to identify where the setting can develop and improve. It’s important to score correctly to give accurate results.

Once you’ve completed the observation, you need to give constructive feedback. Start and end the discussion with positive aspects of the observation. In the middle, discuss areas for development.

How do we get started with peer observations?

Peer observations require:

• a willingness from both practitioners involved in the process
• key questions for the observer to focus on
• a commitment from the observed practitioner to listen to constructive feedback once the observations are complete

Plan this in during time away from the children. Hold an initial staff meeting to discuss the aims of carrying out peer observations and the process.

During the staff meeting, ask practitioners how they feel about the process and discuss any worries or concerns. Either during the staff meeting or in one-to-ones/room meetings, decide who will observe whom. Agree if they prefer to know they’re being observed or not.

Before observations begin, all practitioners should be confident in giving and receiving feedback (you may need to give training on this).

Visit the NDNA website for more support on all aspects of running a successful nursery business.