Let’s PIVOT! Perception of Instruction in Virtual/Online Teaching

Paper

Classroom observations are used to improve student outcomes and help administrators provide focused, actionable feedback for teachers’ professional growth. During the pandemic, educators had to quickly pivot from in-person teaching to remote instruction. While classroom observations continued, many district-adopted scales did not work well with virtual lesson observation (Guilbault et al., 2022). This was especially true for specialized services such as gifted education.

Post-pandemic, online and hybrid instruction continues to be utilized and some gifted learners have remained in full-time virtual schools. Many of the commonly used gifted education observation tools pre-date current technology used in classrooms and are not aligned with current gifted education standards. To address this problem, teacher observation checklists for gifted education virtual/hybrid lessons aligned with the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards and the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children’s (WCGTC) Global Principles for Professional Learning in Gifted Education were developed to complement school or district-adopted observation instruments. These instruments called the PIVOT GT Observation Scales (Perception of Instruction in Virtual/Online Teaching), may also be used for peer observation and mentoring.

In this session, university practicum supervisors, school administrators, gifted education coordinators, and teacher leaders will learn about best practices for teaching gifted students online and how to use the PIVOT GT Observation Scales to guide actionable feedback for teachers of the gifted working in virtual or hybrid learning environments. Research regarding best practices for conducting gifted education classroom observations will be shared along with tips for providing specific feedback. Participants will be provided a link to download these free instruments that have also been translated into Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Portuguese. Participants will be able to identify and discuss key teaching behaviors that should be evident in virtual/hybrid settings as a result of this session.

References:

Guilbault, K. M., Chandler, K., & Caroleo, S. (2023). Supervision and observation in the gifted education classroom. In A. Lavigne & M. L. Derrington, (Eds.), Actionable feedback for PK-12 teachers: Supervising within academic domains and program areas (pp. 149 – 162). Rowman & Littlefield.

Guilbault, K. M., JohnBull, R. M., & McCormick, K. M. (2022). District gifted education coordinators’ leadership roles and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 45(4), 352-380. https://doi.org/10.1177/01623532221124144

Corwith, S., Johnson, S., Lee, C., Cotabish, A., Dailey, D., & Guilbault, K. (2019). 2019 pre-k-grade 12 gifted programming standards. Professional Standards Committee, National Association for Gifted Children.