A 'risk-management' approach to feedback
I've written before about attitudes to risk in teaching, arguing that whilst 'risk-taking' in the classroom is often interpreted as a very positive trait, associated with inspiration, creativity, and excitement, we may well be better served by rejecting this view in favour of more careful approaches.
It seemed to go pretty well - an attempt to provide the precious headspace required - and useful discussions took place. We've also been able to crowdsource ideas for improving the support that's provided at do at whole school and faculty level, including ideas such as better training for support staff on translating key feedback targets, better communications between those running interventions and classroom teachers, and more training on our core elements of practice.
We recently ran a staff meeting on the topic of managing the risks of giving feedback to low attaining students - I'll briefly outline the approach and share the resources below.
Firstly came clarification what exactly we meant by 'vulnerable learners' in our context (essentially, individuals working at low levels of attainment and not currently making strong enough progress). We then overviewed our key messages about features of teaching that we think work best in the context of our school.
Having visited a fair range of other schools to investigate this issue, the question 'how do you teach low attaining / vulnerable learners' tends to generate interesting answers; some teachers will reply with reference to various intervention strategies, attendance drives, after school provision etc. Others will make specific reference to the ways that they adjust their own classroom teaching techniques, such as not assuming knowledge, clarity, modelling, care with questioning. We try to be a school in which teachers have high levels of awareness of their own technique, seeing our own classroom delivery as the best resource we have available. We try to think of this first, whilst ensuring that there is effective whole school support where it's needed.
This is a delicate balance in terms of the messages that leaders give here; teachers work incredibly hard at our school, and it's essential that we don't keep asking for more. This is balanced against the view that there are always adjustments and refinements that we can make which often don't require more work (and sometimes in fact require less). The notion of professional empowerment is important here - it's healthier for everyone that teachers feel, in the face of this significant professional challenge, that there are actions within their locus of control: that when faced with students who are difficult to teach, there are changes which they can make to classroom delivery which are achievable. Not to say that this isn't difficult - finding the headspace required for reflection whilst teaching a full timetable is very hard - and the onus therefore falls on school leadership to create the conditions in which this can take place.
Anyway. We then focused on feedback, considering the double-edged nature - powerful, but time-consuming; valuable, but difficult to get students to engage. A colleague suggested 5 main risks that we take when providing feedback to vulnerable learners:
They may not understand it.
They may get too much feedback and become cognitively swamped.
They may compare scores with others and be demoralised.
Their performance on the assessment may be so low that it’s hard to give feedback on.
They may not attend the assessment or feedback lesson.
Following this, we asked teachers to focus on one student, and complete a risk-assessment - which of the above did they think particularly applied? What could they do about it? What can faculty do? What can be done at whole school level?
It seemed to go pretty well - an attempt to provide the precious headspace required - and useful discussions took place. We've also been able to crowdsource ideas for improving the support that's provided at do at whole school and faculty level, including ideas such as better training for support staff on translating key feedback targets, better communications between those running interventions and classroom teachers, and more training on our core elements of practice.
Comments
Post a Comment