Sometimes a problem in your teaching is obvious because the learner is doing something unexpected, is refusing to participate or is not making progress. When you perceive a problem it’s best to address it right away, and preferably in consultation with your learner. We’ve discussed several strategies for solving problems previously in this lesson.

If you have the opportunity to video a lesson you can learn lots by watching it back, looking at the antecedents, behavior and consequences – both in terms of your behavior and the learner’s.

Sometimes a problem is occurring, but the manifestation is more subtle and you may not notice that the learners are not learning optimally. There are two ways that you can tell that things may not be going as well as possible even if there are no major overt signs of this:

1. Observe the learner’s body language – this will often tell you more than their words or their performance may do
2. Measure performance objectively so that you can see right away if performance is declining or not increasing as fast as it was (of course you can also use measurement to see how well your learners are doing as well!)

In these next two sections we’ll talk about observing body language and then measurement as two ways to determine how your training is going.