The nature of self-monitoring

Astarting point in teacher development is an awareness ofwhat the teacher's current knowledge, skills, and attitudes are and the use of such information as a basis for self-appraisal. Often in institutions a performance appraisal by a manager or supervisor provides an outsider's perspective on current level of performance, based on classroom observation, student feedback, an interview, and other sources of information. However, teachers are also often able to make such judgments themselves based on information they collect about their own teaching. Self-monitoring or self-observation is intended for this purpose and refers to activities in which information about one's teaching is documented or recorded in order to review or evaluate teaching.

Self-monitoring or self-observation refers to a systematic approach to the observation, evaluation, and management of one's own behavior in order to achieve a better understanding and control over the behavior (Armstrong & Frith, 1984; Koziol & Burns, 1985). In everyday life, people often make use of self-monitoring, such as when a person is on a diet and makes a record of everything he or she eats and drinks each day. In this chapter we will examine three approaches to self-monitoring of language lessons: lesson reports, audio-recording a lesson, and video-recording a lesson. Like other approaches to reflective teaching, self-monitoring is based on the view that in order to better understand one's teaching and one's own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, it is necessary to collect information about teaching behavior and practices objectively and systematically and to use this information as a basis for making decisions about whether there is anything that should be changed.