Education and Evaluation – Part III – Ned Flanders Shows How to Evaluate Teachers! And How Teachers Can Evaluate Themselves!

No, not that Ed Flanders. The one we are talking about here was Ned A. Flanders, director of research at the U of Michigan, who wrote Analyzing Teacher Behavior, 1970. I haven’t seen this book, but it seems to me that Flanders started from a different place and ended with a system that is much simpler and more practical than the IOTA system.


Ned A. Flanders asked “How do students and teachers interrelate in the classroom?”

Observing classroom settings Ned identified ten categories of verbal interaction, in three divisions:

A. Teacher Talk – Indirect Influence

1. Accepts Feeling (Acceptance or clarification of students’ expressed feelings, positive or negative. E.g., “I understand how you feel about bullies, John.” or “Mary, are you saying you could never forgive a cheater?”)
2. Praises or Encourages
3. Accepts or Uses Ideas of Students
4. Asks Questions

B. Teacher Talk – Direct Influence:

5. Lectures
6. Gives Directions
7. Criticizes or Justifies Authority

C. Student Talk:

8. Student Talk – Response
9. Student Talk – Initiation
10. Silence or Confusion

A teacher can record his or her class, any three minutes of it. As the teacher listens to it, he or she can write every three seconds what is heard by number. The numbers are totaled, 20 for each minute. Count the 1-4's, the 5-7's, and the 8-9's. Divide these numbers by the total number of observations to find the percentage of the teacher’s indirect, direct, and student participation. This can be done also by an observer. The goal is to increase student talk and decrease teacher talk, while increasing the teacher’s use of indirect influence over direct influence.

Dr. Flanders said: “The single most significant moment in a classroom is that ‘split second’ immediately following something said or done by a student”