The Lesson Observation On-Line (Evidence Portfolio) Platform.

At a time when teacher training is being moved to school-based programmes it is important to engage in a research-informed dialogue about creating more distinctive, and cost-effective 21 st century models of teacher training. Three years ago I began feasibility field testing the Lesson Observation On-line (Evidence Portfolio) Platform [LOOP] concept (Cooper, 2012). Student-teachers from a university in the Midlands of England were video recorded, with their schools' permissions, teaching mathematics' lessons during their second period of teaching experience. The video recorded lessons together with the trainees' lesson plans, accompanying lesson resources, lesson self-evaluations and snapshots of tangible, written pupil outputs captured from three representative pupils were subsequently collated in each individual teacher's evidence portfolio. The trainees' lesson observation feedback reports by their university tutors and school-based mentors were also included in the lesson evidence portfolios. These provided trainees with better, and richer, sources of detailed evidence about their teaching performances during their second periods of teaching experience than had previously been available. Since this paper was initially drafted a Lesson Observation On-line Platform [LOOP Australia] project has been developed and Seed funded by the Australian Office for Learning and Teaching in 2014/5.