Day Two: Reflecting on 'Student Feedback'.

Okay, so I am currently one session in on my second day at the conference, and already I feel like I've got another new project for next year. I think it's going to be a busy one for me! I am so full of enthusiasm right now, being around these people who are as interested and engaged in bettering student engagement as I am (perhaps more so, as they all seem so much more academic than me!) is really inspiring.

I'm going to include a link here to a Guardian article about Rory Gallagher, whom I just saw speak. His focus today as on building use of Student Feedback - having students evaluate teachers in order to help improve practice.

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jun/29/learning-from-learners-hone-teaching-skills 

I'm going to post the 'notes' which I took during his presentation below. If I have time later, I may come back and clean this up a bit:

-       did Masters degree focusing on feedback, and then this led him to focus on student and staff voice, etc.

-       can be forbidding and intimidating at first

-       listening – how we listen to each other, not just students

-       listening to ourselves

-       teacher voice – our own narrative – understanding ourselves before we can listen to students

-       Who I am? What I do? What do I want to be? Where do I want to be? – start by writing that – say a lot about yourself – might be interesting idea to do with students! First lesson thing.

-       Need to then consider what you’re looking for –what’s the point of asking students? What do you want to find out? Are you open to finding faults, etc?

-       Are we actually listening to students? What is STUDENT feedback?

-       More formal feedback – written

-       Informal is ‘mostly’ verbal or non-written

-       What are the barriers to implementing student voice?

-       Measures of Effective Teaching programme – questionnaire borrowed to do own Masters (American)

-       Why are we not getting feedback from students? Why are we not in discussion with students about how we teach?

-       Survey online – did survey at school - put it on Twitter and got more results as well

-       Primary teachers more engaged with student feedback and more open to it (findings)

-       Most teachers get informal feedback from students (according to survey results)

-       Survey suggested that teachers think students SHOULD evaluate their teachers – so why don’t we do it more often?

-       Survey suggests that some teachers are afraid of getting negative feedback – for most this isn’t an issue – why is it an issue for some?

-       Dialogue itself is as important as the results

-       Do we: care, control, challenge, confer, clarify, captivate, consolidate – interesting to use this as a CPD platform

I think this is an amazing idea, and one which I plan to use within my own classroom. I've asked him for access to his 'toolkit' so that I can try to get access to an online version of the survey. I think it would be worth booking a PC room for my remaining KS3 classes, allowing them some time to reflect on my teaching. I have no issue with receiving criticism from students about my teaching, although I know that some teachers might be hostile to the idea of students 'judging' them. However, students are our 'consumers', so it makes perfect sense to ask the consumers how they feel about the product that they receive!

For access to the survey in which Rory based his initial study on, check out the website here: http://www.metproject.org/resources.php

I'll post more later!