FLNW Taieri Gorge Railway Carriage Conversations and (e) Fellow feedback

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.  ~Charles Kuralt

One of the many conversations held on the Taeiri Gorge Train Trip that meant I totally missed crossing the “magnificent stone and wrought iron viaducts and bridges” and neglected to suck breath into every orifice at “the sheer drops to the river below” was all about “Feedback”.

The mesmerising roseg stepped back from the piano for a moment and joined the two T’s, and artichoke in teasing out what feedback tasted like in the hospitality industry, what feedback felt like when you took the real world of hospitality into the muted landscapes of tertiary education and what feedback should be about.

I have never understood offering feedback to institutions.  When I am asked for feedback I am torn by the desire to be faithful to the Arti_choke  and say what I believe, and the smart approach – to adopt a “this is just a game and no one reads it anyway” type of feedback.

Although telling those “that ask what I think”, what I think they most want to hear is smart thinking I am hopelessly attracted to the need to cast all the stones.

Apparently there is another option.  According to T, (or was it K? the rattle of steel wheel against steel track makes me uncertain), regardless of audience you should adjust your feedback so that it able to be understood and adopted. This was a critical new insight to Arti’ – apparently muted and muzzled parboiled even lightly steamed bipolar feedback can be more valuable to effecting institutional change than unloading raw thought. Many institutions spend their whole time “hunting” in response to feedback received. Seems that

• Feedback may be negative, which tends to reduce output (but in amplifiers, stabilises and linearises operation), positive, which tends to increase output, or bipolar which can either increase or decrease output.  Systems which include feedback are prone to hunting, which is oscillation of output resulting from improperly tuned inputs of first positive then negative feedback Wikipedia   
  

Is why the whole (e) fellow thing this year surprised me.  The Moe is big on feedback, or claims to be.  In closing the gap between what students have done, and what they could do the MoE suggests that “

• Specific constructive feedback about learning as it is occurring is one of the most powerful influences on student achievement.  (New Zealand Ministry of Education. 2001, p2

Is classic "wot I say on the web site" and "wot I do in real life" stuff. 

Our cluster teachers attempts to find their  way across the landscapes of the (e) fellowship application rejection process suggests that the right hand of the MoE continues to misunderstand the left wrt wot I say and wot I do. 

Feedback that helps you find your way - the Golden M’s Big Macs, BK’s cheesy bacon tender crisps and Wendy’s Classic Triple with cheese outlets signage, does not feature in the feedback offered by the MoE for unsuccessful candidates. Instead the MoE offers an identical generic patter to all those rejected on why their capability and experience was insufficient for a successful application. – something along the lines of 

You may wish to reflect on these points if considering a further application:

1. Capability and experience of applicant particularly with regard to:

• - appreciation of use of ICT to enhance the learning environment and provide opportunities to implement a range of teaching and learning strategies
• - ability to successfully complete the project; leadership ability, project mgmt, involvement in successful and/or innovative projects
• - commitment to PD and higher level reflective practice

2. Scope and potential value of the project

• - outcomes focussed with key goals related to learning
• - innovative and creative
• - not repeating existing work
• - likely to be of significance and interest to others in the educational community

The generic nature of this MoE feedback was not helpful.  In truth it was both hurtful and vexing for teachers to read suggestions that their capability and experience did not button the button in areas where their professional practice is exemplary and clearly exceeds expectations.  Applicants for instance with, post graduate degrees in the use of ICT in teaching and learning completed in their own time, links established with credible University researchers, projects identified in the wider educational ICT community as innovative and necessary research etc .

It was unclear from this MoE generic “feedback” how individual applications could be strengthened. 

In this respect the e fellowship application response fails the first criterion for effective feedback.  To be counted as feedback the rejection emails should more thoughtfully target the individual applications, should indicate to the teachers that someone has carefully read their application, and respects the thought they have put into it, and should provide some clear burger joint signage about what to try next time .

My experience with our cluster teachers this year means that I will advise rejected (e) fellowship applicants in future that they’d be better off playing “Wake Up” by The Living End on repeat, than attempting to locate thoughtful personalized burger joint feedback in the e fellowship rejection feedback from the MoE

Comments

[Graham Wegner]

Feedback - I think that having stuck my ugly head in front of a group of teachers to talk about wikis and StartPages and then requesting feedback in last night's post-presentation-post, I reckon that being on the receiving end of feedback could fall into a few categories:- (a) feedback about the actual performance. Did I speak clearly? Were my demonstrations easy to view? Could people view my web resources adequately? (b) feedback about what the content/concepts/ideas did to people's thinking/perceptions. What are the implications of my topic? What were your immediate reactions to the material? What will it prompt you to do now (or not do)? and then (c) feedback that inflates the ego. Why were we great? Was I wearing a nice shirt? Was it the best presentation of its type you've ever seen? I could add in another feedback, that of the electric guitars backdropping Mike Seyfang's mashup of audio and imagery, but that's a whole other comment. Hope you're having fun, Arti!

[Bill Kerr]

i think it depends on whether you believe in "objective reality" or not

if all truth is relative then there wouldn't seem to be any real point in giving honest feedback that might offend

for me modernism is preferable to post modernist relativism

being diplomatic and tactful certainly have their place but the philosophical underpinning is the real issue IMO

institutional, hierarchical feedback is not helpful because it's not grounded in real experience, it's like the shadows on the cave wall - i think that's a question of ascending from the abstract to the concrete

[Artichoke]

Reckon it always comes down to the shirt Graham ... the Magnet and I ran a pd contract in gifted ed for a couple of years a while back and found Thomas Guskey's stuff fabulous for figuring out whether we made a jot of difference to teachers and in turn their students

Try Evaluating Professional Development Thomas R Guskey Corwin Press - I got my copy through Amazon

It will change the way you look at pd feedback and plan evaluations forever.

Guskey reckons many evaluations of pd are inadequate and gives three reasons -
1. They are not evaluations at all - merely documentation on what was done
2. They are too shallow - focus on whether people enjoyed the experience - as long as participants consider the experience a good use of their time all is well. We don't look for change in perceptions or change in participants professional knowledge or practice. And we never look at the impact on students _"the individuals whom are schools are principally designed to serve""
3. Professional evaluations are frequently too brief - need to document large scale and long term effects - we are in too much of a rush to provide evidence etc etc

And yes Graham I am having fun - Leigh has created something quite magical in the FLNW group, regret having to leave them all and get back to the day job.

[Graham Wegner]

I did get a comment on my blog from a teacher (who considers herself ICT savvy) who found the whole presentation "confronting" - that is feedback that I can live with. You are right of course, it will be in a month's, year's, whatever time that the impact of any PD will show or fail . I suppose if it's feedback on my own performance as a presenter, I think I should wait until the podcast/video is posted on the TSOF website and give myself my own evaluation. Sixty different people in the audience can equal sixty different messages received from the same presentation. Bill, once again, has gone way over my head but that's not new!

[Bill Kerr]

"Bill, once again, has gone way over my head but that's not new!"

useful feedback graham, thanks, i'll try again, on my blog (looks like I wasn't ascending to the concrete, that time)

[Tony Forster]

Arti, in MoE's feedback has identified a fourth purpose for feedback in addition to the three identified by Bill (http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2006/09/feedback-as-truth-seeking.html)

Managing legal liabilities and demonstrating the exercise of due process in a politically correct environment.

[Artichoke]

I wish you had been at ULearn06 Tony - I think you might have enjoyed Adam Lefsteins keynote on Dialogue in schools AND know that I would have enjoyed talking with you about it afterwards.

Lefstein talks about the importance of thinking about dialogue as a problem rather than a solution - reckon the same approach works for feedback -

In his research paper he talks about tensions between the Forces of convergence and the forces of divergence - so in dialogue we have
1. Communicative activities: Listening pulling against speaking
2. Orientation of openness: Openness to Other pulling against Openness to Self
3. Orientation toward subject matter: Hermeneutics of faith pulling against Hermeneutics of suspicion
4. Primary concern: Care for participants pulling against Truth seeking
5. Tone: Levity pulling against Gravity
6. Regulating principle: Relations pulling against Procedures