Best Practices in Receiving and Implementing Feedback

Video Transcription

Welcome. I'm Trisha Fyfe. And in today's video lesson, we'll look at the topic Best Practices in Receiving and Implementing Feedback. As we learn about this topic, we will work toward several learning objectives. And we'll use the following two questions to guide our learning in this lesson. What is actionable feedback? And what are best practices for receiving feedback in evaluation?

Let's start by diving right into the best practices for receiving and applying actionable feedback. There are several questions to keep in mind when you as a teacher are getting ready to receive feedback.

Do I understand what the goal is for improvement? Do I know how I will measure or determine when I have met that goal? Do I know the steps or actions that I can take to reach that goal? Do I need support to implement those actions or steps? Do I know the expected timeline for reaching the goal? And finally, do I know how I will be receiving ongoing feedback?

Use these questions. If you find you do not have an answer that's satisfactory to you, it's important for you to discuss this question and get clarification from your evaluator.

Another helpful practice is to make sure that feedback you receive comes to you in verbal and written form. Documentation is so essential. You can keep it and refer back to it if needed. Sometimes teachers and coaches might choose to use a video or an audio recording of feedback, which is a great method of documentation as well. It can be watched several times as needed. Both reviewing the written or video and audio feedback are excellent practices when reflecting as a teacher.

Consider the importance of feedback. It's used to assist you as a teacher in making improvements in your professional practice. It should be used to support and guide you in bettering yourself as a teacher.

Let's talk about how we can use best practices for putting feedback into action. It's important first to determine if all that feedback we have received is, in fact, actionable. If so, the next step is to put that feedback into action. This is how we make those needed changes.

The first thing to do is look your support group. Do you have a coach or a peer that can support you in this attempt to implement changes? If not, find this needed support. A coach, a peer, or even professional development opportunities can be so helpful in working toward your goal. Next, determine what you want as far as a template for setting your goals. The PDSA cycle of improvement, Plan, Do, Study, and Act, is a common model to use in this process.

Now it's time to get to work setting goals. Use this template. Outline your goals here. Determine how you would like changes to take place. Make a plan. Create a timeline for the progress. And decide on measurement tools or criteria to help track growth. Consider keeping a reflective log or journal that tracks your progress. Request feedback from a peer along the way. And do this before your next scheduled observation.

Think about watching those teachers that have expertise in areas you might need support in. Observe these peers that might be strong in areas where you are weaker. This is how you learn. Finally, gather data. Collect student samples. Collect evidence of your instructional changes along the way. And show these materials to your principal or your evaluator.

Let's look at a teacher evaluation situation where actionable feedback would benefit both evaluator and teacher. I'll walk you through how this teacher would answer best practice questions and pose any unresolved questions. We'll also walk through an action plan that the teacher could create based on feedback using a PDSA approach.

Let's say a teacher and evaluator met after an observation that occurred yesterday. The evaluator commented on the fact that there was very little differentiation within the lesson, and some students in the class were struggling because of this. This evaluator recommended that this teacher consider using pre-assessments before lessons, as well as consider bringing in flexible groupings, anchor assignments, and tiered activities where teachers assign the activities as alternative ways to reaching the same goals and taking into account those individual student needs.

So let's go through the questions on this scenario. The first question the teacher needs to ask is, do I understand what the goal is for improvement? And the evaluator and teacher have discussed the fact that this teacher needs to improve differentiation opportunities for her students. So this is the goal.

How will I measure or determine when I have met the goal? So the evaluator and the teacher have discussed that this teacher needs to make sure that differentiation opportunities are available for each and every lesson that this teacher uses so that students that are struggling or those students that need more of a challenge have opportunities to reach the goal and be challenged if they need that.

The steps or actions that this teacher needs to make to reach that goal are the fact that they need to implement some of these suggestions of the evaluator. And the support to implement those actions or steps is that the evaluator will follow through with some additional observations and give more feedback.

Do I know the expected timeline for reaching the goal? This is something that the teacher may not fully understand what exactly the observer or evaluator is looking for here. So this is something the teacher would need to discuss with the evaluator.

How will I be receiving ongoing feedback? And again, the evaluator and teacher have discussed that they will be doing further observations and more feedback in the future. For this teacher, they need to institute some type of a plan. So this teacher will use the PDSA cycle, where they plan to use some of those differentiation strategies.

And now we'll look at the PDSA cycle that this teacher has chosen to incorporate. This teacher first plans to implement some of these suggestions. Maybe she starts the next lesson with a short pre-assessment. And then the teacher plans to use a tiered activity where students will have the same goal, but different choices to get them to that goal.

The teacher implements these changes and then studies the results and data. And the teacher finds that all of her students are able to finish the assignment. The pre-assessment helped the teacher know where each and every student was at the beginning. And in the act stage, the teacher determines that these are both strategies that should be incorporated more often. So this cycle will continue in their classroom.

Let's talk about what we learned today. We looked at the questions, what is actionable feedback? And what are best practices for receiving feedback in evaluation? In this lesson, we discussed some best practices. What are some effective strategies for giving feedback and some best practices for receiving feedback after an evaluation or observation? We also walked through an example of a teacher using these best practices.

Now that you're more familiar with these concepts, let's reflect. What strategies are the most beneficial for you as a teacher when receiving feedback? Consider a piece of feedback that you might receive. What actions would you take from there?

Thanks for joining me today in discussing the lesson Best Practices in Receiving and Implementing Feedback. I hope you found value in this video lesson and are able to apply these ideas and resources to your own teaching. To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material.