Teacher Reflection: Key, but how?! Student feedback

              ‘Don't let a win get to your head or a loss to your heart’ - Public Enemy, He got game

 

Teachers are often expected to be reflective, but never provided time or strategies to do so. In some school settings and organisations there are tools and practices that make this much easier. But, for those of us who work in places where this isn’t true, what can we do to remain reflective and continually improving our thinking, and as a result or practice?

 

The importance of student feedback

 

There is great value and utility in student feedback, not because your class, or students know about good teaching and learning. Mostly they don’t, but they can give us a guide to what they are preferring or finding value in. As with all data, student feedback data is both useful and useless, but always superior to no information at all. So, treat student feedback lightly, never allow yourself to get too high or too low. As a human you will always fixate on the negatives, and in teaching there are always negatives that we can focus on. This is especially true for teachers’ coverage in the media. So, with this in mind, we always choose the time of accessing student feedback carefully. We are trying to avoid spiralling rumination and trying to avoid negatively impacting our view of our classes, or individual relationships within them.

 

So rather than tell you how to do it, consider these things:

 

Do you want to be thinking about student feedback over a weekend?

 

Can you look at the feedback from a class after you have finished teaching them for a week?

 

Is the feedback data deidentified? Is there a way you could access it that would make it deidentified?

 

Is there someone in your school or home life that you can bounce this feedback off of?

 

Are you planning on addressing the feedback directly with you class after you’ve processed it? Plan how you would you like to do this before looking at the feedback, as this will shape the way you work with the data.

 

Keep in mind, feedback of this kind holds the potential to be psychologically damaging and challenging to your self esteem, not only as a professional, but also as a human being. Teaching is a great way to become more closely aligned to your own strengths and weaknesses generally and feedback of this kind will be directly linked to your character and the way you view the world, so tread lightly and have supports and plans in place for how to work with, and respond to feedback of this kind.


Running word count:  64,364

 

Comments

  1. MareeMay 13, 2022 at 2:50 PM

    Some of the best professional development I have participated in has been outside of the teaching and education field. The reason that it has been so beneficial is because it encouraged me to view the world, or an issue from a different perspective, connecting me to people and ideas that both conflicted and complemented my current thinking. Discomfort is critical for learning and so engaging in something that pushes you outside of your field of expertise can help you to identify existing assumptions that are embedded deep in your unconscious and make them transparent and therefore able to be considered through a new and difference lens. I agree with Steven when it comes to presenting at conferences. The whole process and experience is valuable and it helps to connect you with others who have similar intérêts.

    However, participating in learning that is completely different also have huge benefits. I remember attending a conference in Melbourne years ago (maybe 10) called The Next big Thing. It was technology focussed and included speakers from Google and other major tech companies who were engaging in and creating so called ‘disruptive technologies’. It completely blew my mind! It was such an eye opener and not just from a teaching perspective but also in areas like team work, business models, and people management practices. These tech companies adopted very difference workplace principles and practices and this challenged some long held assumptions that I had for the better.

    Make the most of any opportunity to learn and develop. I strongly believe that diverse knowledge and skills enable you to be a balanced person, with many intérêts, and therefore an effective teacher.

    ReplyDelete

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