Earlier in my career I was observed teaching a lesson by my Head of Department. I don’t remember what grade I was given (and, given the reliability of lesson grading, let’s be honest it really doesn’t make much difference) and there will have been some strengths highlighted alongside points to improve. I do remember some of the feedback; it upset me then and has niggled at me from time to time ever since.
It wasn’t the negative bit I remember, though. The lesson was on Piaget’s stages of development and as part of the lesson I showed a video in which some of Piaget’s experiments were recreated with young children. I remember carefully planning points at which I’d pause the video and ask the class questions about what they’d seen, what they could tell about how the children were thinking, and to make predictions about what would happen next based on their understanding of Piaget’s theory that we’d covered so far. I was pretty pleased with this section of the lesson as I felt my questioning really developed their understanding. As far as I can remember this was referenced in my feedback along the lines of “Use of video added variety to the lesson to keep students engaged.” It felt like my HoD had just completely missed the point of what I was doing, and the thought that had gone into my teaching. Imagine seeing Roger Federer hitting a beautiful cross-court forehand, placed to perfection and with topspin to make it impossible to return, and then saying it was good because he hit the ball hard (I appreciate the utter absurdity of comparing my teaching to Roger Federer’s tennis but I hope you get the point).
I think that, in part, this was due to the fact that over the years lesson observations had reached a point where no one really thought the positive feedback mattered. Of course, everyone got trained in how to deliver feedback – “Always start with the positives” – but did anyone really care about it? From being on both sides of the table I know that when the observer said something like “I really liked the bit where…” they were really just thinking:
I’m doing this to be nice so you won’t hate me so much when I get to the negative bits
while the teacher was thinking
yeah yeah yeah whatever, let’s stop this pretence and just get onto the bit where you tell me what was crap and what grade I got.
Thankfully graded lessons are beating a steady retreat (and I suspect formal ‘full’ observations are going the same way) but I think there are some residual effects. Our collective mental model for lesson observation feedback prioritises the negative and pays lip service to the positive. Worse still, this is self-perpetuating as those more regularly receiving banal positive feedback are implicitly learning what feedback is supposed to look like, which they will then inflict on others as they progress through their career. And so it goes on.
It could be argued that for lesson observations to be developmental then maybe we don’t need the positive bit at all? If it’s all so insincere anyway then we may as well not bother because it’s not actually going to help people get better. I don’t think that’s the case, though, and believe there are good reasons why we need to focus much more on the positives.
Fixation on the negatives is understandable. However you frame it – as an action step, target or whatever, there’s still clearly an implied criticism. The messaging might be “that was good, how could it be even better?” but this is still likely going to be received by some as “that wasn’t good enough”. It does need careful thought. As someone who gives lots of feedback from lesson drop-ins I know I’ve spent far more time thinking about how I can word my feedback to give useful suggestions in a tactful and sensitive way. When I first started coaching, learning to write action steps was a lengthy and challenging process, and I’ve definitely devoted more effort to that than thinking about the positives. And while I absolutely believed in the importance of giving positive feedback too, it’s taken some time to really appreciate how important that is in a coaching relationship, and how important it is to get it right.
In Switch: How to change things when things are hard, Chip & Dan Heath talk about finding the bright spots. This means rather than looking for what’s not working, we focus on where things are going right and see what can be learned there. I think there’s merit in this for lesson observations too. While we obviously do need to consider if there are areas for improvement, looking more carefully at what is working, and why, is just as important.
Regardless of whether they’re being graded or not, most teachers probably have a fairly stable self-concept of their own quality as a teacher. Repeated lesson feedback combined with student outcomes and other experiential evidence means we probably have a reasonable idea where we might place ourselves on some kind of scale of quality, even if we don’t say it publicly.
As a result of repeatedly vague and meaningless feedback received over the years, many teachers may not truly know precisely what it is that they do that makes the good bits good. There will be some tacit understanding, a general ‘feel’ for what works in lessons, but this may be rarely explored in any great depth. This means some teachers might have an established repertoire of teaching techniques and activities which are assumed to be of equal value, even if research suggests that this is unlikely to be the case. Teachers may hold onto some activities because “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. My students seem to enjoy my classes and my results are decent enough so I’ll just carry on.” There’s a kind of superstitious thinking going on that makes teachers reluctant to consider anything afresh. There are workload implications here too; if teachers hold onto practices that are less effective (but more time-consuming) because they can’t determine what it is they are doing that is really having the impact then workload can become unsustainable, and this effect multiplies if that teacher’s practice is held up as a model for others.
Alternatively, teachers may have a pretty good sense of what works in the classroom but haven’t properly unpicked why. Again, there’s likely some tacit knowledge there, but it may be that they haven’t really taken time to think about what the ‘active ingredients’ are, and whether there are bits that could be sharpened up even more.
Furthermore, while this kind of mental model may be fine for one’s own teaching, it doesn’t help if you want to help someone else. Many teachers find that observing a peer teaching is a powerful form of professional development, but this only really works if teacher and observer share the same mental model of what’s happening in the classroom. If a teacher sees a colleague doing something, but neither of them is able to precisely articulate exactly what they’re doing and why, then it’s not going to help anyone move forward. It’s possible that a novice teacher could watch a more experienced colleague and pick something out that really isn’t that appropriate for their own teaching (but *looked* good), or end up executing something really badly because they don’t really understanding the rationale of what they saw, or the thinking that went into it. Similarly, we might be called upon to mentor a new member of staff (whether new to the school or the profession) where, again, being able to make that process explicit to them is crucial (I’ve discussed this further here)
So it’s time to think about how we properly accentuate the positives, to focus on the bright spots. I think we already have a good model for how to go about this – it’s all about going granular. In this blog, Adam Boxer talks about how to improve the action steps we give using ‘the power of by’ and gives lots of concrete examples to show how really specific feedback can help teachers see precisely what they might do to improve, and why. We could do the same with our positive feedback.
In an attempt to be helpful, here are a few examples. In each case the ‘vague’ version is based on real feedback I’ve either received or given, or that I’ve seen written in formal observation documents. I hope the right-hand version is a move in the right direction, providing more clarity and is likely to promote more meaningful discussion between the observer and the observed. I’m sure there may be further improvements to be made – I would welcome some feedback!
| Vague, unhelpful: | Made more specific: |
| Your questioning was very good showing high expectations | You held out for an ‘all the way right’ answer from Freddie to show that you expect academic rigour |
| You managed an effective class discussion | You managed discussion effectively by clarifying rules of participation and ensuring they listened to each other’s ideas before responding. |
| You used cold-calling well when questioning students | Your use of cold-calling increased participation ratio as every pupil knew they might need to give a response |
| Your modelling of the exam paragraph was really clear | You narrated your thinking as you modelled the paragraph, highlighting precisely the key elements that you expect to see included and the fluid nature of the writing process. |
| Your lesson had a good pace | You gave appropriate amount of time to complete the independent practice. All students were challenged but also made good progress through the task, answering enough questions to give them confidence with the topic. None were sitting around twiddling their thumbs by the end. |
| You used an effective retrieval practice starter | Your retrieval practice starter quiz allowed you to assess prior learning easily which meant you could address some important misconceptions before building on their knowledge. |
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