THE STUDENTS’ VOICE

GATHERING & USING STUDENT FEEDBACK PURPOSEFULLY

This article is a first draft of the chapter in Maximizing student writing and minimizing teacher correction Journal Writing, eds. Jill Burton & Michael Carroll, (2001) Case Studies in TESOL Practice Series, TESOL publications.

1. INTRODUCTION

This case study looks at a program of systematically gathering student feedback on

specific elements of my teaching and materials, which were previously highlighted by

students or myself in my yearly evaluation. The case study also reviews ways I have

used the feedback. I started the case study in September 1998 and originally gave

myself a final goal of March 1999, the date of the regional TESOLArabia conference

at which I wanted to present my investigation. I had a set date on which I wanted to

share my findings and encourage others to use their students’ feedback as well.

Following this and two other workshops I continued the case study and involved other

teachers, which lead to new and unexpected outcomes.

2. SITUATION

2.1. The Classes

The case study is set in a tertiary education college for local women in Abu Dhabi,

UAE. There are restrictions on the type of material we can use and some teaching

practices, which I would have considered part and parcel of my teaching persona

before I came to the Gulf, are definitely unworkable here. To be more precise, there

are some subjects which are taboo for a Western male teaching Arab women and

physical contact, so much a part of my teaching beforehand, cannot occur at all

between a male teacher and female student. However, these restrictions made much

less of a difference in my approach than I would have thought, and this is clearly

evidenced in the openness and value of the student feedback gathered during this case

study.

I have run the investigation over the last eight months with two regular classes I teach

for five hours a week and with a variety of other classes that I have taught on a one off

cover basis. The two five hour classes are in the third year of study at the college and

will finish this year by sitting the IELTS. They are expected to get a minimum Band 5

and the majority of them are at a Band 6 level. I have taught many of the students in

previous years and was able to build a good rapport with them very quickly. As they

were my classes I was able to negotiate the syllabus with them to a certain extent,

within the confines of the course outline and goals which are laid down by the

curriculum. They grew quickly used to the idea that they would be asked for feedback

and, as I point out later, were at times ruthless in their honesty.

The other classes were often at a much lower level with the majority in their first year

of study at the college. The students come from a very traditional rote learning,

teacher centred secondary school system and take some time adjusting to the system

of teaching and learning at the college with its emphasis on student centred and

independent learning. To my surprise these students were also very candid in their

responses. I say surprised , because I had expected many of them to reply with what

they thought the teacher wanted to hear. The case study details my search as to why

they felt they could answer so honestly, and it is from this search that some of the

most important outcomes are drawn.

2.2 Literature Review

As I set out on this case study I determined to read and review as much literature as I

could not only on the use of student feedback but also on Action Research. I wanted

to cement my own understanding of the term while I undertook this study. I have

written this short literature review in a way that I hope highlights my sense of

discovery and progress over the last eight months and to that end begin with the

reading on Action Research.

2.2.1 Action Research

I started my year of discovery convinced that I knew what Action Research was. It

was research undertaken by the teacher in his classroom in answer to a particular

problem, the results of which he shared with others.

The first references I found supported this defining Action Research as “small-scale

intervention in the functioning of the real world and a close examination of the effects

of such intervention”(Cohen and Manion 1985, p.174), and as “a means of increasing

knowledge about the curriculum, teaching and learning” (Kemmis and McTaggert

1982, p.5 in Richards and Nunan 1990, p.63).

However, I went on to read in both books that Action Research should be

“situational”, “collaborative”, participatory” and “self-evaluative” (van Lier 1988,

p.67-8). My study was definitely situational being based in the context of my own

classrooms. It was also particpatory as I was implementing the research myself, and

self-evaluative because the research developed on the discoveries and changes I made.

It was the collaborative element which bothered me since this was an intensely

personal research to begin with. I would not accept at first that Action Research could

not be a voyage of personal discovery without the need for collaboration.

“In action research it is accepted that research questions should emerge from a

teacher’s own immediate concerns and problems” (Crookes 1999). There was no

doubt that this was the basis of my own inquiry. Then, Wallace (1991, p.56) states

that Action Research “should be addressed to practical problems and should have

practical outcomes. The term therefore covers a wide range of possible research

techniques and findings.” This gave me the original impetus I needed to launch into

my own personal inquiry little knowing that I would eventually need to share my

research and deliberately seek collaboration.

Having decided that my inquiry was based on sound Action Research, I read on to

discover how I should conduct my research following accepted procedure. Nunan’s

paper on Action Research in Language Education (Edge and Richards 1993, p.42)

lists six stages in the Action Research cycle which closely mirror the eight given in

van Lier (1988) based on Cohen and Manion (1985). These are:

1. Problem identification

2. Preliminary investigation

3. Hypothesis

4. Plan intervention

5. Outcome

6. Reporting

This paper will detail the above for the purposes of this investigation in the following

way: the first three will be in the FOCUS section, the fourth in the RESPONSE

section and the final two in the OUTCOMES section.

Having come to the reporting stage of this personal inquiry and investigation, I feel

confident that I have fulfiled the criteria for Action Research.

2.2.2 Student Feedback

The information “provided by learner feedback …… is of immense value…. It is

valuable because it is directly targeted at where the problems lie (Bowen & Marks

1994, p.39). Few teachers or authors would disagree with this, but there is little

literature on gathering student feedback by the teacher for the teacher as other authors

like Barkhuizen (1998, p.85) have also noted. He even concluded that “language

learners are hardly ever asked in any overt systematic way about their language

learrning experiences”, and I must admit that many of my conversations and

workshops and much of my reading as lead me to agree with him.

Almost all the reading I did originally lead me time and again to student feedback run

by the instuitute for teacher evaluation and appraisal. For example Nottingham Trent

University openly recognise the importance of student feedback in their new project

for ‘The Development of Teaching and Learning’ (1999). The introduction states, “If

our goal is merely to deliver the lecture, feedback is irrelevant. If however we wish

the audience to Learn Effectively then feedback is vital.” Whilst not negating the

importance of this, I was determined that my own reading should not be driven by

institutional documentation as we cannot be sure that the aim of the institution is the

improvement of classroom teaching.

My reading then became very focused on student feedback gathered by the teacher for

their own use in their classrooms. Many of the articles by teachers who had used

student feedback mirrored my own concerns. “How we get it - or don’t get it - why

we need it, what we do with it once we’ve got it, how we feel about it” (Leather

1998). And, as she points out later, “in many cultures, giving a teacher direct feedback

is simply not done”. I work in one such culture and so my immediate concerns were

as to the accuracy of the feedback I would receive. This concern is mirrored in the

thoughts of many teachers I have talked to in both my own institute and at workshops

with others in the region. Yet the results of this research show quite clearly that

students are as able to assess our teaching as we are of assessing their learning. Other

writers have indicated that their students also provided valuable feedback which

positively affected their teaching. Head and Taylor (1997, p.184) note the importance

of showing the students that their feedback is being acted on when they say; “The

students know that their questions and opinions will be heard and taken seriously, and

through them the teacher obtains feedback on the effectiveness of her presence, both

as a person and as a teacher.” Sue Leather (1998, p.62) reinforces when she argues

that “we need to make sure that we keep it (the channel of communication between

teacher and learners) open and that we listen and respond to feedback.” The

importance of following up on the feedback gathered was continually highlighted in

my own research and developed into the model presented later.

3. FOCUS

The focus of the investigation is to give students a voice about my teaching and how I

can adapt it to accommodate those students. I believe most teachers do this in most of

their classes in an informal unstructured way. Many teachers I have talked to have

agreed that they do ask their students for feedback but it tends to be orally at the end

of a lesson with questions such as; ‘Did you enjoy this class?’, ‘Did you find this class

useful?’ or ‘What part of this lesson did you find most useful?’ Out of 48 teachers at

three different workshops I held on this topic, 22 said that they asked students for

feedback. Of those 22 only eight had an approach that differed from oral questions at

the end of the class, and most admitted that they did not always follow up on that

feedback. Whilst not wishing to generalise from such a small sample I would suggest

that this is a fairly accurate reflection of how most of us approach feedback from our

learners. The reasons for this reticence are many and range from a belief that the

students will only tell us what we want to hear to a fear of what students might say

and an inability to deal with it. Personally, I wanted to look at what would happen to

me as a teacher if I formalised, systemised and documented this process.

3.1 Problem identification

The problems that I originally identified were based on a couple of comments from

my students on the formal student evaluation forms last year. One student said that the

readings I had used with the class were too complicated, a second had said that the

journals I had had the class do should not have been compulsory, another said that the

class as a whole needed more lessons on writing summaries and noted that the others

wouldn’t tell me this, and a fourth said that she liked the way that I taught but wasn’t

sure why we did what we did in the classroom.

This feedback and the perceptiveness of the reponses made me wonder why I hadn’t

been asking them for their feedback and input during the course. As Sue Leather

(1998, p.62) says, it is better “to know when things are going wrong.” It also made me

think that I could improve not only myself as a teacher but also the materials and

techniques that I use in my classes.

From the above I set out a list of original problems:

How can I get reliable feedback from my students?

How should I react to this feedback?

Can I get feedback on me as a teacher, the techniques I use and the material?

Will the above have any effect on my ability as a teacher?

With these original questions in mind I determined to start off my new teaching year

in the spirit I have always tried to instill in the candidates I tutor on Diploma courses

- Risk is Growth.

3.2 Preliminary investigation

“Perhaps we could most usefully start with the learners, by bringing them properly in

at the start of our explorations” (Allwright & Bailey 1991, p.200)

The first problem for any teacher gathering feedback from their students is how to

ensure that the feedback the students give them is honest, reliable and valid. This

obviously requires an element of trust on both sides.

One of the first steps I took was to partly negotiate the syllabus with the students by

providing them with a 16 week blank timetable and asking them to each fill it in with

how they would like to cover the work. I collated these and by the next class two days

later returned a completed timetable. I spent a lesson going through it and showing

them where I had included their input and where I had imposed my own ideas and

explained why. These first two classes were important for two reasons. First, it clearly

showed the students that I wouldn’t just get their input and then do what I wanted, and

secondly it introduced them to the fact that I would spend time talking to them about

their learning and their opinions.

The third class was a reading lesson which was run a bit like a test. The students had a

text and had to answer a series of different questions at the end. The lesson broke into

the reading after each section of similar questions and at the end I asked the students

what they had found most difficult and what they had liked about the class. I was

confronted with a mix of ‘everything’, ‘nothing’ and ‘number 2’. Nothing very useful

to either myself or the students.

Thereafter I began by quite openly telling students that I didn’t want positive

feedback. I took a leaf from my tutoring on Diploma courses and told them that every

class can be improved on but that the next time I teach this lesson it will only be as

good as the feedback they give me. I told them that I could only improve the lesson by

hearing their opinions about the parts of the lesson that they didn’t enjoy, find useful

or understand. By beginning with this largely negative outset I have found it easier to

come back to a more balanced analysis later.

I still found students saying that they wouldn’t change anything but that was

addressed by showing them how the lesson or material had changed thanks to the

critical input of the others. The ways in which I did this I will leave until later in the

section on methods. Students began quickly to take pride in the fact that they had

some input into my teaching, and the feedback became more and more insightful.

3.3 Hypothesis

By now the original four questions I had listed had expanded into a more detailed and

comprehensive research.

How can I get reliable feedback from my students?

My preliminary investigation had shown me that the students would respond

positively and give me detailed feedback, but was it just this class? Could I get the

same type of reliable feedback from classes I took just a couple of times on a cover

period? Was it necessary to demonstrate that the feedback would be used and how it

would be used?

How should I react to this feedback?

How can I demonstrate that I’m using the feedback? What should I do if I wasn’t able

to use it? Do I always need to react?

Can I get feedback on me as a teacher, the techniques I use and the material?

Should I just aim for one thing at a time? Can I realistically get feedback on so many

different elements? Should the feedback be guided or can I leave it totally open?

Will the above have any effect on my ability as a teacher?

And if yes what would it be? Is it an effect I want to see?

I began to realise that my whole research was aimed towards proving one simple

hypothesis; that my teaching will improve if I’m flexible enough and can determine a

set pattern to dealing with feedback

4. RESPONSE

In this section I had originally intended to will lay out my approach to gathering

student feedback as per Cohen and Manion’s (1985) stage four - Plan intervention,

which is subdivided into methods, questions and response. However, I found that the

examples needed to be narrated as they happened as the method and questions used to

begin with changed depending on the student feedback I received. Therefore, I will try

and detail four specific cases where I looked at one aspect of my classroom teaching

and then, in the final section on collaboration, show how other teachers drew on my

work and developed it. The examples I will draw on are approaches to reading, the

types of assessment which can be used for speaking activities, forms of presentation

and methods of error correction.

The review and selection of the examples below will depend on the variety of

interaction between myself and the student(s). In other words I won’t write up two

examples of closed questionnaire feedback. I will attempt to focus on the response

from the students and how intensely involved they became in giving me their personal

feedback. In one case a student waited until two hours after her final class to give me

her feedback.

4.1 Looking at approach

This first example was taken from a strong second year class who are all expected to

score around Band 6 on the end of year IELTS. The group included many students I

had taught before although they were studying together as a group for the first time.

Around the fourth week of study and after I had already introduced the idea of them

giving me regular feedback on my teaching I set out to look into their reactions to

different approaches I use to teach reading. We had already agreed to focus on reading

every Monday and I started the first in a series of classes by listing the different

approaches I would use. They were jigsaw reading, long text question cards, silent

reading for pleasure, group reading, analysis of test questions, clap reading,

prediction, question writing and paragraph matching. As the object of this article is

not to go into different approaches to the teaching of reading I will not give any detail

about the above methods, but I hope that the student responses still come across

clearly. I told the students that over the next nine weeks I would be using nine

different approaches to the teaching of reading and that I would ask them to complete

the same questionnaire (see Example 1) after each class before completing a table at

the end. I did not explain the rationale to the students and their answers surprised me

in that they clearly show the understanding students have of the classroom process

and the techniques we use in our lessons.

At the end of the class I gave the students ten minutes to complete their forms which

they then handed in to me. During these ten minutes they could ask me any questions

they wanted to although I did not give any answers to questions on the approach. I

explained to them that I needed to see their responses and opinions first and that if

they wanted to discuss the outcome we would do so after the final lesson. Example

one shows the handout in its final form. I had originally added the final comment line

to see what would come up, but after the first three weeks students had continually

added comments on their ‘enjoyment’ of the lesson, so I included this question in the

final weeks. After that many students left the final comment line blank. It was also

interesting to note that most students left the ‘why’ line blank at the beginning, but

from about the third week on began to enter reasons. The final week saw all the

students bar one complete every line of the form. The questions asked became more

and more specific and often needed just a ‘yes’ answer from myself. For example one

that I noted after a lesson was, “Can I say because there was too much difficult

words?”

Example 1

Please complete the following honestly.I will use your responses to plan our approach to reading classes next semester.

Week _______Title of text ______________________________________________

Approach _______________________________________________

What was the aim of this class? _______________________________

What did you learn during this class? ___________________________

What did you enjoy most about the class? _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

What did you find most difficult? ______________________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

Other comments: ___________________________________________

At the end of the nine weeks I asked the students to complete the following table to

try and summarise their opinions.

Example 2

Please complete the following table with numbers.1= the most (e.g. the most enjoyable, the most useful)9 = the least (e.g. the least enjoyable, the least useful)

Week Approach Useful Difficult Interesting Enjoyable

1 jigsaw

2 question cards

3 silent

4 group

5 analysis

6 clap

7 prediction

8 question writing

9 paragraph matching

Before the students filled in the table I gave them back their original questionnaires so

they could refer to them while they were completing the table. I collected everything

and collated the results. The following lesson I gave them the collated table of their

opinions and we discussed the whole nine weeks.

Their responses were extremely perceptive. All the students were able to note that the

analysis, question writing and paragraph matching were directly aimed at exam

preparation. 8 of the 11 students noted that the clap technique was aimed at improving

their reading speeds, and 4 out of the students noted that jigsaw reading was aimed at

helping them understand how a good writer organises his writing. I was surprised to

see that the interesting and enjoyable columns were very different, and in the

discussion the students told me that ‘enjoyable’ depended on the activity whilst

‘interesting’ depended on the text. 6 students said that they found group reading

“uncomfortable”, “unhelpful” or “distracting”, but the two weakest students said this

approach was “the most useful” and “very good because the other students show me

ways of read I do not know”. Finally, 9 of the students said that the silent reading

“was not good for class”, “a waste of time” or “boring”.

4.2 Looking at assessment

With my other second year class I wanted to look at the ways in which I would assess

their speaking skills during the semester. The course had 2 tests each worth 15% of

the final mark. The tests were divided into the four skills. The reading, writing and

listening components were tested formally in an exam hall with all the classes

together, but the speaking component was left to the teacher’s discretion. Another

15% of the overall mark was based on a presentation for which a clear assessment

criteria was available. Finally, 10% of the final mark was based on the speaking

element of the students’ portfolio with 3 categories out of 10 divided by three to give

the final mark. The three categories were meetings, fluency and accuracy. The

students were aware of this assessment procedure from day one and kept their own

spreadsheets so they knew where they stood at any given moment. I decided that the

meeting category would be based on language used in three different meetings based

on case studies from the coursebook. The students suggested that the fluency mark

would be based on their classroom contribution over one week which we would select

in advance. The accuracy mark was to be based on a mock IELTS interview and the

two progress tests were to be based on a debate and a discussion.

I decided that since this was feedback based on speaking assessment that I would

gather it orally in discussion with the students. I assumed this would be at the end of

the class and based on an open discussion. After the first meeting, only four of the

more vocal students gave their opinions which included that the method of assessment

was unfair on the shy students, that I couldn’t concentrate on all 18 students at the

same time, that I only looked for grammar errors and that I decided on the marks

based on what I knew of the students and not based on what they had said in the

meeting. Two hours after the class one of the weaker students came to me in my

office having waited over half an hour to get the oppotunity to speak to me and told

me that she liked how I had done the meeting and that I shouldn’t listen to the others

because “they only wanted A grades”.

Nevertheless, at the next meeting I said that each student would have a clearly defined

role and would have 3 minutes to put their point of view forward. I would assess these

three minutes and after that students would gain bonus points based on their

contribution to the discussion and not based on the language they used. I stated clearly

before hand that I felt this would address their grievances as to how the first meeting

had been assessed. At the end of the meeting, I divided them into four groups and

nominated a secretary for each group. I asked them to list two points that they had

liked about the assessment and two ways they thought that the assessment could be

made more accurate. I then left the room for ten minutes. When I came back I

collected the feedback from the front desk. One of the students immediately

commented that this attempt to make the feedback anonymous was obviously false as

I knew their handwriting and the groups they had been in. I asked the class if that was

important and 7 of the 18 students said that they thought it was, but couldn’t say why.

“Maybe you do not like what we write,” was the closest I got to a reason. The

feedback sheets showed that the students thought that this meeting was more fairly

assessed than the first one, but there were some very interesting points. “This course

prepare us for the working world where I must communicate even with a lots of

mistakes. You should look for what I saying not the grammar and good words,” and

another group wrote, “You should tell us our mistakes. You have time to write

mistakes. You do that in our speaking classes why dont you do it in the test.” A third

group agreed with this saying, “why you do not tell us the bad pronouncing we do.

Then we can say the words correct.”

So, for the third meeting I had the students assess each other based on a form in front

of them which let them indicate which student had spoken and if they had understood

them clearly. I completed the same form for the two simultaneous meetings. At the

end, I asked students to type their opinions of the class before the end of the day and

leave them in my in-tray. All the students did this and gave me their feedback. On the

whole this was the most negative feedback I received with 15 of the 18 saying that

they found it difficult to assess their friends, that the assessment got in the way of

their own participation or that they felt they were doing my job.

In the assessed discussion I said that I would write down every sentence I heard which

was at the level expected of the year and write the name beside it. Half way through

the discussion we paused so students could see how they were doing and in the second

half they began to help each other reach the pass mark. I gathered the feedback by

asking each student to come to me briefly during the rest of the day and tell me their

opinions in three minutes. They should prepare their opinion and could gain extra

marks if they put it across well. With this possibility of extra marks they all came

forward and 14 of the students felt that if we had time for these three minutes we had

time to do a speaking assessment based on one to one interviews.

Based on this I suggested we do the final debate speaking as prepared pair work

discussion in front of the class with both them and myself assessing the two students

on the same form. This we did and whilst proving time consuming resulted in the

most accurate assessment in the minds of both the students and the teacher.

This section has proved to be a fairly long winded one, but I feel it shows clearly how

a cycle of feedback and reaction can result in a positive outcome for both the teacher

and the students. This is what I had been looking for when I set out on this journey of

self discovery and I left this particular strain of my research a very satisfied and I

believe improved teacher. Once again the students had shown themselves to be very

aware of the processes of learning that go on around them and my assessment of

speaking is now more flexible and objective than it was when I started with this class.

4.3 Looking at presentation

This example was based on a lesson and six page handout I have used for years on the

present perfect. It is a handout which was originally designed and adapted by upper

intermediate students, and I was interested to see how I could use the same worksheet

with lower levels depending on my presentation technique. The handout clearly

divides the present perfect into three concepts using timelines and involves the

students discussing the concept behind different sentences. Over the year I have

presented this to all eight of our Foundation intermediate classes during one off cover

lessons of an hour and a half with the class teacher agreeing to follow up with the

pages on the handout I did not succeed in covering. Their support and agreement was

vital to this case as without it I would have had to cut the worksheet down and realign

my aim.

For the purposes of gathering feedback I decided to use ‘graffiti boards’ which I had

only ever used before in Venezuela or teacher training sessions. I brought two large

cards into the classroom and put them up on either side of the door. The first group I

tried this with were the strongest group who were aiming to sit for the FCE in six

months time. I decided to present the tense with three paired sentences; one in the past

and one in the perfect with each pair relating to a different concept. The students then

tried to decide why I had separated the three in groups and we finished with a class

discussion and teacher input and explanation using the time lines. We then had the

break before they went on to the exercise where they decided which sentence was

which concept. Before leaving the class for the break I gave each of the students a

board marker and told them that I wanted them to put up on the graffiti boards

anything they wanted about this lesson. I said that I was going to teach another class

the same lesson next week and I wanted their opinion. When I came back ten minutes

later only six students had written anything so I asked all of those who had not written

to add something even if it was only the word ‘good’ or’bad’. I came back after five

minutes to find ten ‘goods’ and 4 ‘nices’. The original six had also only written

comments like; “I like your way of teach”, “I have fun” and “Thank you. It was good

and I learned a lot”.

This was one of the most important learning exercises I had over the months I looked

for feedback. If I wanted reliable feedback I had to give the students guidance and I

had to involve them more in the process, explaining clearly how their feedback would

help me. The second class I presented the material to was an equally strong class. I

used exactly the same technique as with the first class but began the class by telling

them I was going to use material and a presentation that I had developed thanks to the

input from my classes over the last few years. I explained that I would use the ‘graffiti

boards’ to gather their opinions of the lesson at the break. In this way the students

actually participated in the class knowing that they were going to comment on it.

After the timelines I left the class and asked each student to write one thing they had

not liked about the lesson and one thing that they had found particularly difficult.

When I came back after the ten minutes they had not finished writing and asked for

another five minutes. The comments were insightful and again showed me the

usefulness of starting from negative prompts. With 36 comments I found that I could

group them into three main points; time lines, original sentences and explanation. The

comment which summed up the time lines was surprising and interesting. “We know

this lines from our teacher but I do not understand your lines. I want to make my

line.” The original sentence point can best be made by summarising three comments -

why do you give the past sentence with the perfect one. We have heard the perfect but

are not sure when we can use it. The past sentences made it confusing. Finally, the

comment on explanations made me kick myself, “I like you explain the meaning but it

would more clear when we write our sentences with you.” For the next class I planned

to present the material using just three sentences in the perfect with another three

perfect sentences to match them should the students have problems. I decided to see if

the students could come up with their own time lines and finally before the break

would elicit a third example sentence for each concept. I went back to the second

group and thanked them for their feedback showing them how I had adapted the

lesson based on their feedback. They received this without much enthusiasm, but

when I sought their feedback in other cover classes after that they showed me how

important it was to follow up in this way by giving me some of the most

comprehensive feedback I have gathered.

The third class I introduced to the idea of feedback in the same way but one ‘graffiti

board’ I headed WHAT I DID NOT LIKE and the other ONE THING I WOULD

CHANGE. The feedback on the DID NOT LIKE board clearly indicated that they did

not like producing their own time lines and that some were still unclear about the

difference in the concepts. The solutions came from the other board. For the first, “I

want an example of time line”, so I planned to do the first time line with the class, and

for the second, “What we call this concept for I’ve eaten camel?”, so I decided to

elicit a name for each concept and give the students time to take notes. The fourth and

fifth classes gave similar feedback but questioned why I didn’t give them more

sentences at the beginning, so by the penultimate class I had an OHT with three

sentences for each concept which the students discussed. For the final two classes I

sought the feedback at the end of the double period with two boards now titled

WHAT I FOUND THE MOST DIFFICULT and ONE OTHER COMMENT. This

second board allowed students to say what they had liked about the class with 28 out

of the 31 comments being positive.

By the end of the eight classes I had a presentation of specific material that was very

different than when I had started. It was better aimed at the lower level students, more

clearly staged and gave the students more space. Equally, I had learnt the importance

of clearly explaining why I was looking for feedback, the importance of guiding

students as to the type of feedback I required and the importance of responding to that

feedback by showing the students the difference their input had made.

4.4 Looking at error correction

The final example I will draw from is based on a cover lesson I regularly use which

has students divided into groups to correct their writing. Each group focuses on one

specific aspect of the writing like verb tense, paragraph organisation or interesting use

of examples. The first drafts are then circled around the room until they get back to

the writer who then has to produce a second draft. In all of these lessons I

experimented with different forms of feedback. At first I just asked students to write

their opinions of the class - one positive and one negative - on slips of paper I left at a

table by the door or which I handed out and gave the students three minutes to write

and then drop into a hat. This resulted in a lot of vague answers such as “Good.

Thank you. Bye.” Or “I don’t like it”.

I found that by putting a clear question at the top of the paper I got much more

focused feedback. On one set of slips which asked the question, “What do you think

about correcting each other’s writing like this? Was it helpful? Why?” answers ranged

from “it’s very useful because from it we will know our mistakes” to “it’s bad bad bad

thing because it the teacher responsibilities”.

This resulted in two realisations. One, that I had to have a clear introduction into this

activity which explained to students the benefit of drafting and student correction, and

the second was that the students became much more specific in their criticisms the

more frequently they gave me feedback. They were in fact fulfilling the goals of one

of their other courses called Critical Thinking. For example a later feedback sheet

from the above group had the following answers; “It’s good because we know our

mistakes and know it to not doing again. Today I learn I must catch reader in the

introduction” and “It’s useful because it give me a correct speling and verb tens I

don’t know before this lesson.”

I took this to the Critical Thinking teacher, and he began to use student feedback on

all his classes. He pointed out later that as his aim was to improve the critical

capacities of these girls that he often spent as long as 15 minutes at the end of his

classes discussing the lesson with the students. He also suggested some forms of

gathering feedback that he had begun to use and which I had not considered. These

included email, journals (which I had used but not specifically for feedback), a

suggestion box which he kept permanantly by his desk and which any of his students

could put feedback into about anything to do with his teaching and the minute

feedback slot at the end of class in which all the students talk at the same time and

during which he notes as many points as he can.

4.5 Collaboration

This final experience of seeing another teacher take the investigation I had been

working on for three months, and come up with so many novel and exciting methods I

had not even condsidered, convinced me of the importance of sharing and working

together with others on our classroom research. It showed me dramatically that Action

Research is truly effective when done in collaboration with others.

From that point I decided to get others involved, and I gave an in-house presentation

on what I had done so far to the teachers in the English department. While many

admitted that they asked students for feedback, no one had tried a systematic

approach. Three teachers came to me afterwards expressing an interest in working on

this with their own classes and one even had a handout he wanted to start using with

his classes to investigate how the students felt about working in different groups. This

had been a particularly problematic class with several apparent animosities among the

students. The sheet asked students to comment on how they felt during the class when

they were working together, how well they had worked as a team, what they had

learnt from the other student and finally how the groups compared to the previous

lesson. After fifteen classes, during which every student had worked with every other

student, the teacher presented his results to the class and suggested they try and work

in one particular seating arrangement for a week. The teacher himself commented that

the class seemed far better able to work together and he had few problems thereafter. I

also taught the group a couple of times after this and found them much more

homogenous. The teacher was not sure if this was due to the final seating

arrangements or to the process of fifteen classes and the constant reflection required

by the students during that process. So, he asked the students and 15 of the 17

attributed it to the process of having to comment on how they had worked as a team.

I also presented my work at the TESOLArabia conference in March and again at a

local secondary school in April, and whilst I have had little feedback at this point, it

has been an impetus to my own research. One teacher from the secondary school

contacted me recently to let me know that he had adapted the ‘graffiti board’ in a truly

original way. He lets students write their feedback on his lab coat as long as it refers

to the lesson he is teaching. If he receives any glib comments on the coat he simply

refuses to let them give feedback, and he has found that this combined with threats of

extra homework has kept the feedback focused and useful.

These are just two examples of how other teachers have developed methods of

gathering feedback and helped me clarify my own reflections and assumptions about

both gathering and using student feedback.

5. OUTCOMES

The outcomes of this year of personal action research were many and varied from a

growing awareness as to how intelligent and probing the analysis of students could be

to the most rewarding year’s teaching I have had in many a year during which I have

both felt and seen my abilities stretched. I feel that I have developed as a teacher,

learnt to respect my students in a light I had never done so before and allowed my

students to grow with me, so that we could together build a better learning

environment. That is undoubtedly the main outcome - a personal one.

However, there were other outcomes including, most importantly a model for

gathering and using student feedback that I have developed based on both my

experience and the experience of others around me who came to share in this

investigation in ways I had not foreseen.

The model can be stated very clearly as Explain Ask Collate Reflect Act. Explain to

the students why you are gathering feedback and that you do not expect just good

responses as they will not help you improve. Ask for the feedback which you require

with specific questions aimed at the area you are investigating. Collate this feedback

into a series of manageable points you can work on. Reflect on how you are going to

react to these points and what changes you need to make, or equally what changes you

cannot make. Act on this feedback and tell the students how you are acting on their

feedback. Involve them in the process, because if you don’t the next time you ask for

feedback you won’t get such a good response.

It is a simple sentence based model which does not state anything revolutionary. It is

all common sense, but common sense which we often forget to apply in our busy

teaching lives.

Finally, there were two unexpectd outcomes for me personally. The first was the

extent to which the student feedback helped students to develop their critical thinking

skills, and the second which will probably have many a reader nodding sagely that

they were aware of this all along. For me, however, it was a striking realisation and an

extremely important one. One that I do not believe can be stressed enough. Good

Action Research works best when shared and investigated collaboratively with

colleagues.

To conclude this chapter and my ‘Reporting’, I would just like to say that this chapter

has been successful in its aims if it encourages any of you to attempt using student

feedback to influence your classroom and teaching decisions or if it has convinced

you to form an Action Research group to work collaboratively in an investigation of

your classroom teaching. (7,639 words)

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