Ross Morrison McGill, an influential educator who established the Teacher Toolkit website, has produced some new research into feedback strategies for teachers.
In his new book, he has broken down marking into nine approaches to help educators with formative assessments. He aims to reduce the workload for teachers while delivering worthwhile quality feedback. An in-depth guide to his methods is available here.
Let us take a look at some of the reasons why he has developed these strategies.
Why are the new strategies so helpful?
Ross indicates that teachers need to understand the techniques to help students learn in a specific context.
Using more specific strategies will reduce time spent on pointless marking as the focus will remain on improving learning.
Identifying and Naming New Strategies
Most teachers can identify the difference between verbal and written feedback. However, it seems that teachers have developed their own methods for verbal feedback across classrooms. Although this is wonderful, it has been a great shame that these strategies have not been widely shared.
The new research suggests that by naming and explaining these strategies, they can be shared more widely and adopted across many schools.
Creating a standard methodology ensures consistency and will lead to an increased positive impact on learning.
Quality Assurance
When school leaders or Ofsted want to assess the effectiveness of marking in a school, it can be challenging when so much feedback is instinctive and not recorded.
Think about non-verbal feedback. Gestures are used continually by teachers in the classroom to provide cues to pupils. Body language and gestures actually form a significant part of everyday feedback with no workload involved for the teacher. What teacher doesn’t use a thumbs up or a friendly nod by instinct to show positive feedback to students?
Ross has attempted to address this issue by including non-verbal feedback strategies in his book. This will help schools understand the types of feedback used effectively by teaching staff and ensure that all staff are aware of the benefits in particular situations.
Is written feedback a thing of the past?
Without a doubt, the years of endless written marking and feedback have taken their toll on teacher wellbeing, and this research suggests that it does not always have the potential to improve learning.
By showing the value of verbal and non-verbal feedback, Ross encourages school leaders to embrace a different and revolutionary approach that will change the feedback landscape. Of course, revolutions take courage, and the book attempts to provide reassurance through years of research that backs up the new model.
There will always be times when written marking and feedback are essential. Teachers need to know and record progress and achievement from time to time. This new trend looks to streamline feedback and categorise written, verbal and non-verbal feedback strategies to allow for a better use of teacher’s time and create a more impactful approach.