Abstract:

Students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico can take a course to be trained to be foreign language teachers at its Foreign Language Center. This is a one-year course that is divided in two semesters. In both of them they have to take a module directed to train them in observation, planning and practice. That module is considered as the most important one because students should apply on it what they learn in the others. That is why the study of observation and planning is very important to train future teachers.
In this talk, the author will present the results of a study of some pieces of information given by his group of teacher training students whose area is English. Those pieces of information are related to what they expect of observation and how they feel when observing classmates and when they are observed by others. The pieces of information were given by the author to the students before they started to observe his class; once they started observing each other; and once the semester ended.
There are three different sources used to analyze the students´ thoughts:
1. A questionnaire given to them by the tutor at the beginning of the term which was formed by the following questions:
What are your expectations of observation as an observer?
What are your expectations of observation as a person who is observed?
2. A questionnaire given to them at the end of the term which was formed by the following questions:
What did you get from observation as an observer?
What did you get from observation as a person who was observed?
What aspects of the theory related to observation that you studied all over the course are the most relevant for you and why?
3. Diaries written by them during the time they observed his tutor as well as their classmates classes.
Some variables were considered to analyze the information given by the teacher training students:
1.The fact that all students had never taught English at university level.
2.The reading of articles related to the topic like: Ethical implications of classroom observation; suggestions and prescriptions used in observation; observation for training, development or assessment; classroom observation tasks; exploring teaching and teacher development through reflective teaching.
3.The fact that they first observed his tutor but later on they also observed their classmates.

Keywords:

Observation, teacher training programs.