360° Feedback : Self- evaluating teaching work
Bauer, 2004
I learned what I describe in the following article in FQS, a pilot project at
Schulverbund Graz-West. This was first developed by Altrichter, Posch and
Strittmater, 1997
This article has two sections
1. Theoretical Model “360° Responsibility Matching 360° Feedback”
2. My practical experience
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1. 360° Responsibility Matching 360 ° Feedback
Anton Strittmater, a Swiss consultant working for PALCH, and inventor of a quality
improvement model for school, which is called FQS, has developed some criteria
which have to do with the different responsibilities of teachers. He has also
developed a model which he calls
360° Responsibility Matching 360 ° Feedback
The responsibilities he sees are:
Responsibility towards oneself
Responsibility towards the changing clientele:
 students
 parents
 colleagues
Responsibility towards the stable professional system:
 School
 School authority
 The profession (represented in professional associations, maybe)
Global responsibility
towards society
Strittmater suggests that it is enough to reflect your work and collect feedback
from all the perspectives of people directly affected, especially from the changing
clientele of students and parents and be clear about your responsibility against the
stable professional system ( school, school head, school authority, but also the
profession in general) by contributing to the development of the profession in
general - this would be more than just having an inspector who sometimes calls.
Even if there might be clear criteria and standards.
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2. My practical experience: Self-evaluating teaching work
I want to discuss the theoretical model by giving examples of my own work as a
teacher.
Self- evaluation is normally carried out according to criteria or standards.
In Austria there are no general standards for teaching work yet – and I am happy
about this situation. Teaching in my view should remain creative work and social
interaction rather than output-oriented lecturing. If there were national criteria, they
would have to be process standards, describing what good teachers aim at and how
they do it.
So, how do I evaluate my teaching work according to the model which we learned
about in a 2 year pilot project called FQS in our network of five reform schools
Schulverbund Graz-West?
a) The first responsibility is towards myself as a teacher. In Action Research one
of the basic principles is that practitioners have an implicit understanding what
quality means in their work. So the individual’s responsibility is to act
according to your understanding of good quality and to collect feedback in
order to improve.
b) The second responsibility is towards the changing clientele.
Obviously students and parents make up a large part of the responsibility.
Some people do have their doubts about students’ feedback, especially from
younger ones. And they are right to a certain degree, of course. Students are
dependent on teachers, students have a relationship with a teacher – they may
not want to hurt her/him. But firstly, in the suggested model it is only one
perspective.
Secondly, giving feedback is a skill that can and should be developed at school.
Thirdly, it depends on the attitude and ability of the teacher to create the right
atmosphere, an atmosphere in which it becomes clear that the teacher is also a
learner regarding his profession and that there are things only his students can
tell him.
Also the content of feedback leaves some room open for choice: -you can focus
on the input, the process (the interaction…) or alternatively on the output, or on
them both. It is most interesting of course, when you collect feedback on your
aims as a teacher (e.g. promoting independent learning in students…)
Practical example:
Students’ Feedback through Role coaching
The context:
Classes are formed according to age groups in Austria, and usually stay together for 4 8 years depending on the school type, usually with the same teacher as their tutor,
responsible for the group) I had been working with this class for three years in English,
History, media and communication and as their tutor. I had put a lot of effort and energy
into this group, and we had developed a relationship based on mutual trust.
So when I wanted to collect FEEDBACK I had to decide what I wanted FEEDBACK on. I
therefore needed to do some thinking on what my goal had been over the last three
years.
I decided that my main goal had been to support the students in their learning by
creating a good learning atmosphere which was challenging as well as free of fear. So I
decided on role coaching as the method of choice.
1) Preparation of students. I explained the importance of feedback and gave them some
rules (See slide ”Giving supportive feedback” in I-probe library).
2) Then we talked about “good” FEEDBACK, and that you help people more when you
dare to tell them about a possible problem rather than by just telling them that
everything is alright. So I definitely encouraged them to be critical , but also to try
and formulate the comments in an acceptable way.
3) I asked four questions:
a) What do I as a teacher do to support your learning?
b) Which behaviour do you want me to continue or to show more often?
c) Which behaviour do you want me to show less often?
d) What kind of behaviour sometimes disturbs you?
They wrote the answers on paper. It was their own decision whether to write their
names on it or not. I thanked them.
It was exciting reading matter, but it is not something to read in a break between
lessons. Wait for a quiet moment.
The next step is to summarise the data. This means creating categories such as:
Expected – unexpected/ surprising things
Good – critical
I talked the summary over with a friend. I have this interesting (but not unusual)
tendency only to focus on the negative things. I expected a lot of positive items,
which is why they somehow didn’t count.
Among the more critical comments were that students asked me not to talk publicly
about the results of their tests. They thought it was private – even the good results.
There was one critical item I was worried about. It was that I have a tendency to be
ironical or even cynical when things don’t go as I want them, e.g. when students
don’t stick to the rules. So one girl told me that she had felt hurt by such a comment
and she knew of others who also felt like that. This was somehow surprising, because
I had thought that they had thought it was funny, because most of the time some
people in the class were laughing.
So I took that point very seriously, but it is not something one can stop just like that.
I told the class what I had learned from their feedback, and that this item seemed
the most difficult one. I asked the class to make a sign whenever I showed this
behaviour in future, or at least come to me after the lesson to tell me about it. And
so we developed a feeling that they were helping me to improve my personality as a
teacher.
Parents: It is a rather different story to ask for feedback from parents in a
planned way rather than maybe getting unwanted feedback at any time.
But, like their children, parents are also dependent (at least in Austria), because it
is the teachers who give marks and decide whether the pupils pass or fail. So
everything depends on creating the right atmosphere here as well. In collecting
parental feedback one must be aware that parents usually want the best for their
own child in the first place and that very often they have different wishes and
views from their children. In collecting parents’ feedback you also have to be
clear about your own limits: what your goals are in a certain situation, and what
you can change and what you cannot.
Practical Example: Evaluating the effects of a trip to a foreign country by
using an evaluation target:
I had taken a class on an exchange to Canada and we had had long discussions
with the parents about the goals of this trip. They had mainly been:
- promoting English language learning at an age (16) when it becomes more
difficult to progress,
- promoting intercultural understanding
- developing a sense of togetherness and co-operation within the class
- becoming more independent and more self-confident from the experience of
going abroad
In order to collect a quick overview of what parents felt about how far we had
achieved our goals, I used the evaluation target. It is like a target for shooting
with the centre meaning 100% or totally achieved and the outer circles meaning
very low or missed. I divided this circle into 4 quarters and put a question next to
each part. The parents were given four self-adhesive dots and were asked to stick
a dot at the percentage point they felt had been achieved for each question.
Then parents were asked to react and provide evidence or theories about what
they had heard from other students. It turned out to be an interesting discussion,
because parents usually have a view limited to their son’s or daughter’s
perspective. Sharing other experiences turned out to be very worthwhile not only
for me as a teacher, but also for the parents.
Colleagues/School: For hundreds of years teaching was a lonely profession. It
was the students and the teacher behind the closed classroom door and that was
it.
Today we are talking about school development and the teaching staff as a team.
Sadly I know examples of schools which developed a bad reputation and lost
students just because of one teacher! And losing students in Austria has effects
on the teachers because the school is assigned a certain number of teaching units
according to the number of students.
So, it can be very important to get feedback from your colleagues and/or the
school’s head teacher. There has been a lot of discussion whether head teachers
are the best choice for giving feedback on teaching. They may not even have
been good teachers themselves, and at any rate, they are experts only in one or
two subjects. So the suggestion is, to have colleagues teaching the same subject
to give you feedback on teaching work, and the head teacher only on school
development issues. So the Principal could give you feedback on the way you
participate in staff meetings, bring in your ideas and suggestions, and work on
extra projects for school apart from your own teaching.
But you have also responsibility towards other schools (e.g. performance levels
- and towards the profession as a whole (because bad teachers ruin the
reputation of all the teachers!)
The practical example here is a classroom observation by a colleague.
When I started experimenting with independent learning, one of my main
concerns was that I was giving up control over their learning. There was a large
class of young students which seemed to be working hard, but how could I
know? When you are lecturing you know what you have told them and you feel in
control of their learning. We know it is an illusion, but what do we know about
the other approach? So I asked some colleagues to join me in the classroom as
observers. My question was: “Are the students working and are they LEARNING?”
– After the observation the colleagues conducted a few interviews with the
students and the answer to my question was very satisfactory. So I was able to
develop more confidence about this new teaching method.
c) Towards the stable professional system:
School authority: Giving Feedback and assessing the quality of your work as a
teacher used to be the inspector’s responsibility. This meant that you probably
saw him/her once or twice during your first teaching years which was an
extremely stressful situation. Usually the learning effect was next to nothing.
Recently they have made a major change in Austria: The head teacher is now
responsible for self-evaluation at his/her school while the inspector is only
responsible for the meta-evaluation and to check whether self- evaluation is done
seriously. But this new development is very much work in progress.
Practical example:
I see it as my responsibility to inform my head teacher regularly about my
activities, usually at an appointed time so there is a quiet atmosphere.
Inspector/General profession: To inform the inspector and contribute to the
profession in general, I think that case studies, portfolios, and regular
contributions to the regional teachers' working group are an excellent means.
The sad story is that there is little feedback. However, some people who are
inspired by what you have written will always take the trouble to tell you what
they thought of it. But I think this part is still very underdeveloped in the teaching
world. (I wonder who will give me feedback on what I have written here? It is
only a mouseclick, you know).
Christa Bauer
Schulverbund Graz-West
Klusemannstrasse 25
8053 Graz