How do people really learn?

What makes for good lesson observation feedback? (part 2)

Back in 1988 Ruth Butler did some interesting research on the effects of different types of feedback on the performance of learners. She found that performance improved if she gave learners comments that described what they had done well, and how they could improve on what they had done. But she also found that if she gave grades, then performance deteriorated. And, fascinatingly, if she gave both comments and grades, the results were even worse (see below).

 

It seems that what happens if you give both a comment and a grade, is that the learner only remembers the grade and forgets the comment (see below).

Butler did her research with school pupils, but the same principle surely applies equally to adults. So, if we really want lesson observation to improve performance (i.e. the quality of teaching and learning) then we need the courage to remove all mention of grades from lesson observation feedback. The way to improve quality is for the observer to simply give honest feedback on what was good about the lesson and in what ways it could be improved. And if the feedback can be the start of an ongoing professional dialogue between the observing practitioners and the observed the practitioner - then that will be even better.

References:

Ruth Butler's research was published as “Enhancing and Undermining Intrinsic Motivation; the Effects of Task-involving and Ego-involving Evaluation on Interest and Performance”,
British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 58, pp. 1-14.

The two diagrams above are taken from a PowerPoint presentation by Robert Coe that can be found at www.dur.ac.uk/r.j.coe/learnteach/learnteach4.ppt

What makes for good lesson observation feedback?

The trigger for this post is something my good friend and colleague David Sugden wrote in his blog last week (26 January). David described an example of a quite destructive approach to lesson observation, and made a heartfelt plea for a more supportive lesson observation regime:

Surely the purpose of lesson observation is to improve teaching and learning - not to demoralise staff to the point that they become ill. But this is what… is happening all over the country. Instead of treating lesson observations as an opportunity to support and encourage good teaching (and learning), they are used in negative soul destroying ways.

This reminded me of two very different experiences of being observed (or to be more precise of receiving observation feedback) that I had about three years ago. In both cases I was delivering professional development training.

Experience 1

The observer was quite critical of some aspects of what she had seen, but did not express this at all in a destructive way. It was more along the lines of “if you did less of x, and adopted more of a y approach, I think you would become a more effective trainer. What do you think?” She was right, and I honestly feel that by reflecting on her advice I did become a more effective trainer (and three years later I still think sometimes about what she said). The really interesting thing is that no grade was given nor did the observer express an overall view on now good or bad I was as a trainer. She simply concentrated on how I could become better.

Experience 2

The feedback consisted of several rather bland comments on what had been observed and a grade on the usual four-point scale. The grade awarded for the lesson was a ‘2’. I explained to the observer that I would like to be as good a trainer as possible, so I asked what I could do differently in order to deliver a session that would be graded ‘1’. The observer could offer me no practical suggestions at all, but simply talked about some ‘extra spark’ being necessary to get the top grade.

The first observation really helped my teaching to improve, whilst the second did not make a jot of difference. As an exercise in improving the quality of teaching for the organisation concerned it was a complete waste of time and money.

I think a lot of the problems with lesson observations are caused by the absurd notion that each lesson has to be given a grade (and I have thought carefully about my use of the word ‘absurd’ here). In my next blog post I will write about some research that suggests that the act of giving a grade (regardless of the level) actually stops performance from improving.