.png)
New Books from SMT - Releasing in Oct.
Teacher Observation and the Evidence Gap
A classroom produces far more information than one observer can capture through notes, memory, and professional judgment alone. Teacher Observation and the Evidence Gap examines the difference between what an observer believes happened and what can be documented with rich data captured by a single observer. It reveals why conventional observation frequently overlooks important patterns in questioning, wait time, student participation, engagement, teacher responses, classroom management, and teacher–student interactions. Even experienced observers can leave a classroom with only a partial picture of the teaching and learning they witnessed.
This book introduces higher-resolution teacher observation as a way to fill that void. By systematically capturing classroom interactions and transforming them into counts, timelines, pattern matrices, heat maps, engagement measures, wait-time analyses, and other meaningful indicators, observers and teachers can identify patterns that were previously difficult to see or document. Rather than replacing professional judgment, this evidence strengthens it—creating a more accurate and complete account of what occurred in the classroom. Teacher Observation and the Evidence Gap challenges educators to reconsider what observation can reveal and demonstrates how better evidence can produce a clearer understanding of teaching and its effects on students.
You Can’t Coach What You Don’t See
Effective coaching begins with a clear picture of teaching—but evidence alone does not improve instruction. Educators must know how to interpret that evidence, discuss it productively, and translate it into purposeful action.
In You Can’t Coach What You Don’t See, Craig A. Berg draws on more than three decades of work in teacher education and classroom observation to present a practical approach to improving teaching through focused feedback, reflection, and evidence-based decision-making. The book explores the flipped observation model, the Essential Core of classroom interaction, teacher self-reflection, goal setting, action research, and the use of higher-resolution classroom evidence to uncover patterns that are often difficult to see during traditional observations.
Using SeeMeTeach as a window into classroom practice, Berg shows how educators can identify and refine both their instructional footprint—the effects their instructional decisions leave across a lesson—and their teaching fingerprint—the recurring patterns that characterize how they interact with students. The goal is not simply to collect more data. It is to help teachers, coaches, and administrators see teaching more clearly, engage in richer professional conversations, and turn evidence into purposeful improvement.