Teachers too need feedback
Sep 18, 2007
DID you know that classroom teaching is a two-way communication? Both teachers and students need feedback to improve. Just like students cannot progress without evaluation, teachers cannot grow professionally without constructive feedback from learners.
TEACHER'S DESK
By Jamesa Wagwau
DID you know that classroom teaching is a two-way communication? Both teachers and students need feedback to improve. Just like students cannot progress without evaluation, teachers cannot grow professionally without constructive feedback from learners.
Although classroom testing and evaluation equally plays the feedback role, it has little to help you understand the feelings of learners. You need comprehensive feedback to help you improve on your delivery methods.
Teaching is a dynamic profession and sticking to old methods would make you stagnate. At the dawn of a new term like this, you need to critically assess your performance in the previous term as a way of making your performance better.
The only way of improving yourself is by constantly evaluating your performance through feedback from your students.
It might be tempting to think that you know it all, but who says teachers are not lifetime learners?
Being receptive to feedback helps you teach students to be receptive to constructive criticism. Such students will have no problem receiving a feedback from you. The culture establishes a warm teacher–student relationship upon which productive learning thrives.
For teachers who have a strained relationship with their students, this approach might not be fruitful. Nevertheless, the challenge will serve as a learning point to help you handle students differently. Let us share some tips on how to get feedback in class.
Good feedback should be specific, not general. Feedback received at the end of the term is bound to be general and not specific. Arrange for feedback at the end of a topic or a lesson.
You can design a questionnaire either as an individual or as a department. The questionnaire content can vary, depending on the subject in question. You can frame it with sentences like:
I have understood the content of the lesson.
I would like more examples in this topic.
The lesson pace was too fast for me to follow.
I really struggled to pay attention in this lesson.
You can then grade the questions using words like, strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree or any other style you feel comfortable with.
These questions are by no means exhaustive. You are free to frame your own questions in a way that best fits your subject or topic covered.
What if students give critical feedback about your teaching? Students have opinions about your teaching whether you ask them or not. In fact, feedback opens for you a door into their world and enables you to know what they think about your teaching method.
Constructive feedback helps you reframe your teaching methods as you creatively find different ways of handling different topics.
You may not agree with all their feedback or follow all their suggestions. But there will be something worth putting into practice.
Cultivating a culture of feedback might appear difficult especially for teachers who are not comfortable with their teaching methods. With time, however, you reap huge benefits in a warm class atmosphere and active student participation.
By Jamesa Wagwau
DID you know that classroom teaching is a two-way communication? Both teachers and students need feedback to improve. Just like students cannot progress without evaluation, teachers cannot grow professionally without constructive feedback from learners.
Although classroom testing and evaluation equally plays the feedback role, it has little to help you understand the feelings of learners. You need comprehensive feedback to help you improve on your delivery methods.
Teaching is a dynamic profession and sticking to old methods would make you stagnate. At the dawn of a new term like this, you need to critically assess your performance in the previous term as a way of making your performance better.
The only way of improving yourself is by constantly evaluating your performance through feedback from your students.
It might be tempting to think that you know it all, but who says teachers are not lifetime learners?
Being receptive to feedback helps you teach students to be receptive to constructive criticism. Such students will have no problem receiving a feedback from you. The culture establishes a warm teacher–student relationship upon which productive learning thrives.
For teachers who have a strained relationship with their students, this approach might not be fruitful. Nevertheless, the challenge will serve as a learning point to help you handle students differently. Let us share some tips on how to get feedback in class.
Good feedback should be specific, not general. Feedback received at the end of the term is bound to be general and not specific. Arrange for feedback at the end of a topic or a lesson.
You can design a questionnaire either as an individual or as a department. The questionnaire content can vary, depending on the subject in question. You can frame it with sentences like:
You can then grade the questions using words like, strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree or any other style you feel comfortable with.
These questions are by no means exhaustive. You are free to frame your own questions in a way that best fits your subject or topic covered.
What if students give critical feedback about your teaching? Students have opinions about your teaching whether you ask them or not. In fact, feedback opens for you a door into their world and enables you to know what they think about your teaching method.
Constructive feedback helps you reframe your teaching methods as you creatively find different ways of handling different topics.
You may not agree with all their feedback or follow all their suggestions. But there will be something worth putting into practice.
Cultivating a culture of feedback might appear difficult especially for teachers who are not comfortable with their teaching methods. With time, however, you reap huge benefits in a warm class atmosphere and active student participation.