To Give Feedback or Not To Give Feedback!!!

This week was about feedback, how to give it and how to receive it. The session kicked off with a discussion regarding a 25 min video on “Performing with an invisible audience”. by Hattie Walker. She gave me some tips on how to give an interesting and interacting sessions. Click here to watch the video.

Key tips I thought were interesting and will implement into my own teaching sessions are:

  • Creating a connection with my audience by broadcasting my personality
  • Embracing the awkward silence because it’s normal.
  • Not over thinking the session, keep it simple.
  • Implement interaction using tools such as Padlet and Whiteboard.
  • Watch the session back for self evaluation

The second part of the session was discussing a piece of fictional text regarding a female professor and her response to receiving feedback and giving feedback. Click here to read the text.

Stephanie is the professor a postgraduate Research Methods Course who has amazing achievements and is very accomplished. Attends church and is a writer editing a major journal in her specialist field. She doesn’t see her teaching course as real work an seems more interested in her major new research grant proposal.

At the end of her course her students complete an evaluation questionnaire. The feedback from students where not what she expected and didn’t receive the negative feedback well. Some of the comments where:

  • “Boring readings, which were too theoretical”.
  • “Being used as Guinea Pigs or being experimented on in regards to student self assessments”.
  • “Not making lecturer notes and presentation slides available online”.

In my small group of 4 we discussed this question in relation to the the character. “Do Female High Achievers Find Teaching an Obstacle”?

This derived from her proception of her self and defensive behavior toward the feedback the students gave her teaching methods. Her high achievements have given her a huge ego. As the students feedback challenges her positionality she dismisses their opinion.

The three key issues with her character that stand out to me where feedback acceptance, giving feedback and self reflection. There is also a lack of pastoral care towards the students as she dismisses their feedback as retaliation to low grades.

If she deals with those three issues and establishes a true relationship with the students the level of respect will change the classroom atmosphere and create a safe space.

But maybe as she doesn’t see teaching as her real work she hasn’t really thought deeply about how to create a relationship with her students and stand as a dominant academic.

Seems as though teaching is in the way of her real passion for the research grant proposal. Is teaching an obstacle for her to speed through and get out of the way?

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