All Things CLASS

Is there and explanation as to why we do 4 20 minute cycles? What is the research or justification for this particular duration of time? Teachers often feel that observers are not getting the full picture when we are only in the program for about 2 hours. 

Thank you! 

Hi Joni,

The CLASS observation is intended to be a snapshot rather than an exhaustive assessment of a classroom's quality throughout the day or year.The decision to complete 4 cycles is left up to the individual program, although the CLASS manual recommends 4-6 cycles. This allows the observer to take "samples" of the day, which results in greater reliability and allows the observer to see a variety of interactions, possibly seeing transitions, etc.In terms of the length of the cycles, I am unsure of the specific research that allowed us to set the minimum of 15-minute cycles, but my sense is that anything shorter than 15 minutes limits the ability to see and document interactions for all 10 dimensions, and longer than 20 minutes does not improve the reliability of the scoring, is challenging for the observer and is harder to score due to more observational data.

I hope this helps and if you have further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out! 

Is there and explanation as to why we do 4 20 minute cycles? What is the research or justification for this particular duration of time? Teachers often feel that observers are not getting the full picture when we are only in the program for about 2 hours. 

Thank you!