Mary’s narrative related her first experience of being formally observed teaching, which came during the second year of her four-year degree. The lesson was observed by both the regular class teacher and a university tutor. Mary’s narrative started with a general reflection on the lesson, that some parts of the lesson were “OK” and others “did not go well”, which was mainly accounted for by her feeling “panicked” in the observation. This summary given to me was very similar to her response at the time when the university tutor started the feedback session by asking Mary how she thought the class had gone. Mary referred to this as “the usual” way feedback started, and described her typical response of “It was OK, this could have been better, that could have been better, but I think the kids got it”.
One of the most striking themes in this narrative is what I labelled ‘an experience dominated by the tutor’ in the numerical analysis stage (component three). In this case, it is the tutor’s unrelenting focus on what Mary feels to be a minor issue that drives this whole narrative. Similarly, dialogue does not feature as a theme except for being shut down by the tutor. This
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is most obvious in the blunt response from the tutor “I didn’t think that at all”, which has an air of finality to it, particularly with the intonation Mary describes. However, Mary might also be seen as shutting herself out of dialogue by offering only a token response to the initial invitation to self-evaluate. Describing this as the “usual” question and response suggests that Mary saw this as more of a ritual than a genuine invitation to start dialogue. It is impossible to say whether a different initial response might have changed her tutor’s behaviour, but the superficiality of her initial self-evaluation suggests that Mary started by positioning herself in a passive role.
When asked about her response to her tutor’s question, Mary described this as coming from a recommendation from the university to “start off with a positive, but then say ‘but’ and come up with something you could have improved on and then it always makes you look good”. When pressed further, she described this as intending to show that she was looking at herself critically and did not have too big an ego, which she related to the features of a reflective practitioner.
More strategically, Mary described this formulaic response as trying to “second guess” what the tutor was going to say and being “eager to please”. This was intended to show that her understanding matched that of her tutor, aiming to get them to think “ooh yes, I agreed with that”. In this particular case, however, she did not think that anything she said made a difference to what the tutor would have said next – “she went ‘no’, she basically went ‘no, that’s not what I think’, and then told me her opinion”. Feeling that “she wasn’t the kind of woman you spoke back to”, Mary’s response was once again passive: “yeah, OK”.
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nature of the feedback – indeed, her repertory grid repeatedly emphasised a strong preference for feedback which was “not afraid to tell you both good and bad” and “tell you what went wrong”. At the same time, she expressed a preference for tutors who were more positive in general and were open to dialogue. For example, it was important for her to feel that her opinion mattered and that the tutor wanted her to be in the school. This distinction is exemplified in one construct where Mary surprisingly did not have a clear preference between “softer approach” and one where “I was scared of getting feedback, she could be critical without hesitation”.
Taken together, these constructs and the narrative seem to reinforce the importance of dialogue and the detrimental effects of a tutor dominating, whilst also emphasising the importance of honesty and unfiltered feedback. Mary did not necessarily have a problem with her tutor only mentioning negatives about her lesson, but rather was upset that there was nothing beyond this which looked like it was trying to help her. Indeed, her only attempt at dialogue seems to provoke a defensive response from the tutor. Dialogue shuts down as Mary herself is closed out of the conversation – Mary is referred to by the tutor as “she” as the tutor talks directly to the class teacher in Mary’s presence. This might more generously be seen as the university tutor addressing criticism to the class teacher for not helping Mary to prepare a more strong assessment opportunity, but from Mary’s perspective seems more like an attack – she referred to feeling “terrified”, “shot down” and “pulled to pieces”.
After this feedback meeting, Mary was given two pages of written feedback from the tutor. This reiterated the key criticism on what seemed a relatively minor issue. Mary could only remember this and one positive statement, which she described “attaching myself” to so that she could feel better about the lesson. This suggests firstly that the tutor felt confident that
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dialogue would not change her written feedback as this was prepared in advance, but also that Mary saw very little value in that written feedback since she only remembers one comment from two pages.
Relating this narrative to her survey responses was done through creating percentile ranks since this removed the need to consider the range of responses. For example, Mary’s ‘self- confidence’ ranking puts her in the lowest 10% while her ‘need to perform score’ puts her in the highest 20%, and she reported a fairly average (i.e. median) opinion on both the importance of consistent hard work and strategic uses of feedback. Mary’s percentile ranks for the nine components were:
1. Learning-focused feedback 21.94 2. Students’ self-confidence 07.75 3. Consistent hard work was important 56.61 4. A need to fit into a school culture 37.77 5. An experience dominated by the tutor 76.84 6. A need to perform in assessments 83.61 7. Feedback focused on the students’ overall best interests 17.05 8. Strategic use of feedback 43.07 9. Feedback as measured in satisfaction surveys 22.76
Table 11 Component percentile ranks for Mary
The rank for these components seems to match very closely with Mary’s narrative - she has a strong sense of needing to perform, and of an experience of feedback which was dominated
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by her tutor (though interestingly not an experience about fitting into that school, further emphasising the importance of the tutor specifically). As predicted from the numerical analysis, learning intention and the idea that the student’s best interests were at heart are both correspondingly low in cases where the tutor dominates. What is also interesting is that there was no correlation for self-confidence in the numerical analysis, but Mary has a strikingly low rank for self-confidence which seems to also run throughout her narrative as related to her feedback and relationship with her tutor. She seemed fairly unconcerned in her self-evaluation before this experience, so it seems reasonable to assume that the feedback was influential in lowering her self-confidence.
In terms of learning, however, Mary seemed to largely ignore feedback from this tutor and attached herself to a less experienced class teacher who seemed more caring and “was sort of the middle ground anyway”. This less experienced teacher was also valued for her recent experience and knowledge of current procedures and policies, so “she was great at throwing it at us”. This informal feedback was much preferred to how the school seemed to conduct performance management feedback, which Mary described as “all a bit strange” because it focused so much on simply telling her something was wrong and that she had to fix it, which was very similar to how the pupils had to be given feedback. The informal feedback therefore meant that Mary’s feedback was “always constructive”, even though in that environment she felt that generally “I don’t think it was very constructive for anybody in any situation, but that’s just how they handled things”.
Mary expressed a preference for more positive and encouraging feedback – both as a learner and a teacher. She would “always try and go in positive”, using the “two stars and a wish” model because “there’s no point going in negatively because it sets the wrong tone
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completely”. However, she also explained that she found it difficult to give what she saw as “real” feedback because she would often focus too much on being encouraging. This was partly explained by familiarity, that she would be more “guarded” until she got to know someone, as they would be with her, although “for some people it doesn’t work like that”. In one case, Mary described feeling that she had to introduce the negatives as a way of giving permission for the tutor to mention them in the feedback rather than just being encouraging. This also impacted on the understandability of feedback, as Mary felt that some tutors “were too scared” to write direct feedback and so wrote it in a more confusing way which had to be “deciphered”. In contrast to this “timid” tutor, others “were not afraid to tell you where you went wrong or what didn’t work”, with Mary much preferring the direct approach.
Mary also valued tutors taking time to understand the context of the class, either by knowing the class well or asking Mary about it before giving their feedback. This interest in the context was partly related to effort, with Mary contrasting the tutor who made her feel “appreciated, like your opinion mattered” against tutors and teachers who “couldn’t be bothered...they were sat at the back doing their own work”. This also affected whether Mary felt able to speak freely: where some tutors would appreciate her explaining more about the lesson whilst this would “definitely not” be appropriate with another whose “word was final”.
As the repertory grid developed (below), Mary’s preference for blunt or direct feedback was described in greater detail. She described being “afraid” of receiving feedback from a tutor who could be “critical without hesitation”, which seemed to contradict her earlier statements about wanting feedback to be blunt. She described the “heartbreaking” feeling of just receiving negatives, whilst stating that “you’ve got to know the negatives to improve”. This helped to explain a preference for feedback which was unfiltered, yet still balanced, which
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seems a more suitable description than Mary’s choice of “blunt”.
Emergent pole
1 2 3 4 5
Contrasting pole
Understood individuals in the class Focused more on content Not afraid to tell you what went
wrong
Timid, you had to mention negatives first
Detailed written Bullet points
Brief/hard to get out Long, in depth Negative attitude generally Positive person Related to previous feedback FB just in the moment Consistent style (balanced), not
afraid to tell you both good and bad
Not many negatives at first, but gave me more as got to know me
Would want to know
background/context
Just observed in the moment
Felt my opinion mattered, they
wanted me to be there
Wasn’t bothered either way
Always gave feedback Only gave FB on official observations
Open to dialogue Her word was final In-depth, specific Hard to decipher Detailed, concise, clear Not
FB from school’s perspective on
good practice
FB tailored to me as a learner
I was scared of getting FB, could be
critical without hesitation Had a softer approach
Table 12 Repertory grid responses from Mary (ticks indicate preferences where given)
Mary similarly described preferring feedback which was “concise but detailed”, which she recognised as being an unusual sounding request. In part this reflected the effort of a tutor matching Mary’s own effort: “there’s nothing I hate more than ‘Here’s two bullet points’. You
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go, ‘I put all that effort in and you gave me two bullet points?!’”. Whilst she still valued a snapshot judgement from a brief observation because it gave “an impression of where you’re heading”, Mary’s preference was for tutors who made the effort to get to know her and the teaching context. This was associated with regular “slow drip” feedback, which “took the pressure off” and was reassuring because it gave her a “constant feel of where they think you are”. In this way, feedback was detailed because it had a better understanding of Mary’s long- term development and would encourage her to “try figure that out...you look for yourself because you can’t be told”. However, it was also important to be concise “if it’s something where they’ve got the answer and it’s just something I completely missed, ‘here do this’ is very helpful”.
Despite the apparent linguistic contradiction, being able to give feedback which was both concise and detailed could be explained by the type of advice being given, whether it was for long-term development or was a tip for good practice. This reinforced the unfiltered preference described earlier, with the addition of the idea that tutors should put in effort because they expected a lot of effort from Mary. “Concise but detailed” may also relate to dialogue, as she described being told very directly how some school procedures worked due to being a religious school. In this case, Mary valued very concise feedback because these were non-negotiable aspects, “how it’s got to be done”, so extra detail or discussion would be a waste of effort (although in this case it was perhaps too concise as she felt rather unwelcome).
Mary’s feedback preferences seemed to relate to the importance of performance, which came through strongly in her survey responses. She described being advised by both the school and university that “that you do something big and special” for observations, so
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seemed to expect that feedback on these events would similarly be big and special. She expected that tutors would put the effort into getting to know her so that they could give better feedback, and would think about which parts of their feedback should be concise and which should be detailed. Mary worked hard to be organised (including managing part-time work commitments) and was disappointed when the university failed to do the same, commenting in the text box on her survey that some schools obviously “didn’t want you there” and that the university’s organisation was “poor”.
Feeling frustrated by inconsistencies between assessment and feedback or the university’s poor organisation in general seemed to be related to Mary’s expectations for herself. She described expecting to work hard, sacrificing her social life and having to be very organised in her independent learning, so it seems reasonable that she would be frustrated by the university failing to keep to the same standards. It is perhaps this expectation that university life would be tough and she would have to work at drawing value out of feedback that led Mary to say that she was very satisfied with feedback at the university (an opinion not picked up in the questions which aimed to capture satisfaction).
Mary’s phrase “concise but detailed” is also a helpful distinction when compared with responses from other students, possibly explaining why some tutors are felt to “bang on about” minor points whilst others are “simply left with” too little information to act upon. This distinction also supported Mary’s survey response which indicated a very low perception that her best interests or learning goals were a priority, so it was important for her to get the strategic information as efficiently as possible so that she could still have time to work on the more important, detailed feedback.
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