A lesson conference is a structured professional conversation, aimed at analysing a lesson and improving teaching and student learning. It is often used in the contexts of mentoring and peer-review, and when conducting learning studies. The approach to lesson conferencing in this pack employs a notion of professional conversation, where:

• schools are viewed as learning communities ; and
• all involved in the professional conversation are considered potential learners , no matter how experienced they may be as teachers.

This view of professional conversation changes the way lesson conferencing is conceived when conducted as part of mentoring and peer-review. The learning community model of mentoring contrasts with the rather top-down 'transmission' model, where the mentor acts as councillor and expert critical friend, handing down advice to the mentee. It also contrasts with the 'supervisory' model of peer review, where the main purpose of observing a lesson is to provide the reviewer with the evidence upon which he or she can provide a well informed, 'neutral' judgement of the merits of the lesson.

The 'learning community' model accepts that mentors may well provide counselling support and may have much accumulated wisdom to pass on to beginning teachers, and that mentors and peer reviewers have to make informed judgements regarding professional competence. Nevertheless, when professional conversation is conceived as a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, as in the learning community model, it will usually not be one-to-one, as in the more traditional approaches to mentoring and peer-review. Ideally, it will involve a number of participants, perhaps the mentor or peer reviewer along with other experienced teachers. Having multiple voices in the conversation not only safeguards against possible mentor or peer-reviewer bias; it opens up the conversation to the possibility of teachers professionally learning from one another, in exchanging views and negotiating meanings. All who participate may therefore be viewed as learners, even as they also possess professional expertise.

Users of the materials will notice, however, that some of the video clips show examples of one-to-one conversation, reflecting the widespread use of that practice. In each case, the exercises that follow the video extracts invite users to provide the multiple voices that are missing in the video clips.

Lesson observation and conferencing, from the perspective of the learning community model, place a particular emphasis on pupil learning; not simply teacher performance. Indeed, whether the pupils have learnt anything and whether what they learnt was worth learning, plus the strategies used to bring about learning, provide the main basis on which comments about teacher performance should be made.

Hence, this pack of materials not only covers generic skills of lesson conferencing, it also aims to develop skills within the broader context of lesson observation and professional debate, where the main focus is on enhancing pupil learning.