Asking for, or giving someone feedback can be difficult. It requires an openness, humility and vulnerability that even on a good day most of us would struggle to fully embody. Whether you’re the person receiving feedback, or giving it, there is a need to understand how best to communicate to another person in a way that helps them to develop and grow.
In our study session with Lindsay she mentioned that old adage that ‘people don’t remember what you tell them, they remember how you made them feel.’ If we use this as a premise for how to deliver feedback as teachers, we can think about how to use the criteria that UAL uses to assess students’ work to help us form advice and feedback that is honest, uplifts students and helps them to consider how to use assessment (be it formative or summative) as an oppurtunity to grow.
One way to do this is to consider how to use the assessment criteria UAL has created as a building block for creating a clear picture of how students can accomplish their desired grades. Working within the clear parameters of five criteria, the assessment process is broken down into clear sections that cover how students:
Investigate through research, imaginative thinking and making – Enquiry
Develop initial research by demonstrating an understanding of the chosen subject through clear practical decision making during the act of making work, gathering information and necessary skills to create work and contextualising the practice by further researching relevant artists, philosophers, writers, cultures, societal influences etc. – Knowledge
Make work displaying various examples of experimentation, demonstrating a clear development of initial ideas through to more sophisticated pieces and a consistent building up of work – Process
Provide evidence of their ideas and knowledge about their subject and collates/presents it. How cohesive is the development of ideas and how have they demonstrated this? – Communication
Complete and present final pieces that portray a level of skill and knowledge, both materially and conceptually. What is the connection between enquiry, knowledge and process and is it shown? Critical analysis of their own work and processes. – Realisation
Having the assessment broken down and explained like this enables me as a teacher to clearly outline to a student what is expected of them, whilst offering students a simple and clear way to critique their own practice. In addition to working with the enquiry, knowledge, process, communication and realisation criteria, when delivering feedback it’s important to do so holistically, understanding each student has different needs, responsibilities and challenges outside of the course, and ways of processing information. Taking all of these things into consideration allows you to have a broader understanding of a student’s needs and how to support them. For example, we can use assessment as a tool to give voice to marginalised individuals and build power. Safe space crits that are run by UAL lecturers can be used if students feel they aren’t receiving feedback that’s enabling them to develop their practice and are being affected by negative interactions with their work. These spaces allow fellow students to give feedback alongside lecturers and can offer reflective spaces where feedback is shaped by group discussions and conversations.
Lecturers can use the crit space as well as tutorials and summative assessments to practice ‘feedback forward’ (information that can be used to support and help a student for future endeavours) to build on feedback given, by asking three questions:
What steps are you taking?
Why are you taking those steps to get there?
What have you learnt and how do you intend to move forward?
Following this, it’s important to provide key terms, artist resources, people working with relevant material/ideas to contextualise the feedback given. Practical examples of how to meet learning outcomes can then be used to reinforce prior comments and observations made about work, creating a useful and practical way to help students develop a positive relationship to feedback.
How do we, as lecturers, receive feedback though? When the shoe is on the other foot how do we respond to critique of our pedagogy, lesson plans and interaction with students. In Macfarlane’s case study, the character of Professor Stephanie Rae has a multifaceted reaction to feedback. She appreciates how much is learnt from observing others and how offering feedback can help one grow, but she is reluctant to embrace feedback from her students for a no. of reasons. ‘She certainly did not have the time to spend ages rewriting the course with her research workload.’ ‘Her busy professional life left her little time for other things.’ ‘The research methods course was her only formal teaching commitment, in addition to working on various projects, speaking at conferences, writing for publication and editing a major journal in her specialist field.’ Stephanie has a lot on her plate, to say the least, and her response to feedback in part might be affected by the sheer amount of work she has to do outside of her teaching responsibilities. Theorist Laura Berlant explains how it is important to interrupt “the flow of consciousness with a new demand for scanning and focus…To be focused into thought is to begin to formulate the event of feeling historical in the present.” Reading this we can see that although it can be comfortable and convenient to coast through teaching methods we are familiar with and have planned out, if students provide feedback that contradicts the effectiveness of our approach, then we must engage with that feedback in the here and now and, “jam the machinery that makes the ordinary appear as a flow.” (Laura Berlant)
With this in mind, we can see how important it is to use feedback as a way to learn and improve the experience of our students. We can work with students and speak to them about subject matters in ways that are relevant to them by asking questions and creating group discussions. We can show relevant content and use inclusive language and course material whilst providing students with a breakdown of what will be covered in the session before the lesson, sharing resources that’ll prepare them for the class before and after it occurs. We can also think about how to learn from peer observations and advice given by fellow practitioners as a way to broaden our teaching techniques. For example, when I spoke to fellow PGCert students we came up with suggestions for how to receive feedback that prioritised students collaborating with lecturers in a way that centred their needs and gave them agency: “Ask them for feedback, get a student representative to send suggestions for what they would like to cover, things they need to be explained differently or further.” Suggestions such as these demonstrate what sort of action can be taken to positively respond to students and the feedback they offer. As discussed in prior blog posts, the ontological relationship of being requires both the student and teacher to work together, creating reciprocal interactions that are beneficial for both the person giving and receiving the feedback.
Part of Stephanie’s difficulty with her students’ feedback is that she’s doing a lot of work outside her teaching commitment and she doesn’t have time to address the criticism by changing the course because she’s too busy. If we think about taking up teaching then, we have to ask ourselves the questions of why we want to teach? What are our goals? What are our priorities? If we focus on using assessment and feedback as a place for personal and professional development, then we can utilise these oppurtunities and look at them as steps in becoming better communicators and support networks for the students we work with.
People don’t tend to feel great hearing that they could have done better, but it’s necessary to make mistakes in order to learn. Mistakes don’t define you, they offer the potential to grow, improve and become better. With regards to assessment, mistakes provide both the student and teacher the perfect oppurtunity to evolve and work dynamically. As Audre Lorde put it at a keynote presentation to the National Women’s Studies Association, “Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all perish, for they serve none of our futures.”