Maggie mc donnell
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This document summarizes a presentation about using reflexive practice and formative assessment to develop meaningful assessment in higher education. It discusses defining teacher identity, understanding assessment, and providing effective feedback. The presentation advocates for engaging students through ongoing reflection and dialogue using journal prompts. Examples of prompts aim to develop a personal connection while reflecting on course content. Challenges include maintaining appropriate personal disclosure and accommodating large class sizes. The goal is to use feedback as a dialogic process that empowers students and strengthens the student-teacher relationship.
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Maggie mc donnell
- 1. MEANINGFUL ASSESSMENT THROUGH REFLEXIVE PRACTICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION EDUTEACH2017 TORONTO MAGGIE MCDONNELL, MCGILL UNIVERSITY
- 2. SETTING CONTEXT Teacher identity in higher education Feedback and formative assessment Connections
- 3. DISCUSSIONS OF TEACHER IDENTITY Who or what is a “teacher”? Teaching in Higher Education The personal is professional
- 4. DISCUSSIONS OF ASSESSMENT Understanding assessment Assessment in practice The role of feedback Connecting identity and assessment
- 5. EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK – AND OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVENESS Prior experience & expectations Students Teachers Gaps & missed connections Lack of follow-through/up
- 6. ITERATIVE/GENERATIVE FEEDBACK THROUGH DIALOGUE Engage with course content/concepts Engage in ongoing reflection AND interaction Activate student voice/agency Develop autonomy AND individuality
- 7. APPROACH Deliberately conversational, personal No “corrective” feedback Red ink Variety of prompts
- 8. IMPORTANT ASPECTS Freedom Creativity Dialogic nature Bonding Familiarity Access Cathartic Safe
- 9. EFFECT ON OTHER FEEDBACK Easier to talk to me Sense of familiarity Feedback felt personal Better understood feedback
- 10. EFFECT ON ATTITUDE TO COURSE In-class relationship was more familiar and natural Class more intimate Provided structure
- 11. OTHER COMMENTS Journals were cathartic and helpful The journals became, for many students, a safe place to write freely, about school stress, life, philosophy
- 12. “I think it is a great way to develop a stronger bond between students and their teacher. Doing this exercise throughout the semester definitely helped me feel like my teacher cared a lot about me as a person, as a student, and also for my success. I really enjoyed this. Thank you!”
- 13. How personal is too personal? Accommodations Reigning it in Large classes Several sections CHALLENGES & CONSIDERATIONS
- 14. REFERENCES Ashwin, P. (2015). Reflective teaching in higher education. London: Bloomsbury. Bardine, B. A., Bardine, M. S., & Deegan, E. F. (2000). Beyond the Red Pen: Clarifying Our Role in the Response Process. The English Journal,90(1), 94. Branch, W. T., & Paranjape, A. (2002). Feedback and Reflection: Teaching Methods for Clinical Settings. Academic Medicine, 77(12, Part 1), 1185-1188. Bromley, K. D. (1993). Journaling: engagements in reading, writing, and thinking. New York: Scholastic. Chanock, K. (2000). Comments on Essays: Do students understand what tutors write? Teaching in Higher Education,5(1), 95-105. Cook-Sather, A. (2002). Authorizing Students' Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education. Educational Researcher, 31(4), 3-14. Covic, T., & Jones, M. K. (2008). Is the essay resubmission option a formative or a summative assessment and does it matter as long as the grades improve? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,33(1), 75-85. Dohrer, G. (1991). Do Teachers' Comments on Students' Papers Help? College Teaching,39(2), 48-54. Ellery, K. (2008). Assessment for learning: a case study using feedback effectively in an essay- style test. Assessment in Education, 33(4), 421-429. Garmon, M. A. (1998). Using Dialogue Journals to Promote Student Learning in a Multicultural Teacher Education Course. Remedial and Special Education,19(1), 32-45. Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2004). Does your assessment support your students’ learning. Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Grossman, P., Hammerness, K., & Mcdonald, M. (2009). Redefining teaching, re-imagining teacher education. Teachers and Teaching CTAT Teachers & Teaching, 15(2), 273-289. Hennings, D. G. (1992). Students’ perceptions of dialogue journals used in college methods courses in language arts and reading. Literacy Research and Instruction, 31(3), 15-31. Lizzio, A., & Wilson, K. (2008). Feedback on assessment: students’ perceptions of quality and effectiveness. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(3), 263-275. Pollock, J. (2012). The Hinge Factor: Feedback. In Feedback: The hinge that joins teaching and learning. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin. Price, M., & O'Donovan, B. (2006). Improving Performance through Enhancing Student Understanding of Criteria and Feedback. In C. Bryan & K. Clegg (Eds.), Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (pp. 100-109). London: Routledge. Roe, M. F., & Stallman, A. C. (1994). A comparative study of dialogue and response journals. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10(6), 579-588. Sadler, D. R. (1998). Formative assessment: Revisiting the territory. Assessment in education: principles, policy & practice, 5(1), 77-84. Shang*, H. F. (2005). Email dialogue journaling: attitudes and impact on L2 reading performance. Educational studies, 31(2), 197-212. Walker, M. (2009). An investigation into written comments on assignments: do students find them usable?. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(1), 67-78. Wiliam, D. (2015). Foreword: Assessment Literacy. London Review of Education,13(3), 3-4.
- 15. EXAMPLES OF PROMPTS Write a follow-up to a previous entry (please identify which one you’ve chosen) Choose a passage from the reading that stood out for you. Reflect on why you chose this passage, and what kinds of emotions or reactions it provokes. Think about the themes we’re looking at in the novel, and discuss how one of these themes is present in today’s current events or pop culture. Tell me about something you have done or learned in another course this semester. Why did this particular activity or concept stick in your mind? Write about your semester, or even your year, so far. Are you feeling settled? Anxious? Better than this time last semester/year, worse, or about the same? Write a letter to someone you need to forgive, or whose forgiveness you need. Describe your favourite place (small or large scale), and tell me what makes it so special. What’s something you did as a child that you wish you could still do? Tell me about the best and worst things about high school. What is the weirdest conversation you’ve heard (or participated in) recently? If you could have a “do over” of a particular moment in your life, what would it be? What part of the course so far has been the most interesting or challenging for you? Why? What came up in any previous class discussion that made you want to know more? What questions did the discussion raise for you? We’ve talked about a few aspects of essay writing now. Tell me how you’re feeling about the process, and your own writing. What other questions or comments do you have?
Editor's Notes
- They are familiar refrains: students say they don’t get any feedback. Teachers say they spend hours crafting helpful comments, only to watch students toss their papers in the trash on the way out of the classroom. Students say they don’t understand the teacher’s comments. Teachers say students don’t apply their feedback. What these different complaints suggest is that the biggest problem with teacher-student feedback is one of miscommunication. Students don’t recognize feedback when it is offered, know what to do with it when they do, or know how to ask for it if it’s not provided. Meanwhile, teachers, especially in higher education, don’t understand that their students need guidance on how to ask for, interpret, and apply feedback. We teachers tend to forget our own individual experiences and habits as students, yet assume that our student experience was universal and representative. In other words, we expect our own students to think, write, study, and behave as we did ourselves. This last point is, of course, very pertinent in post-secondary education; chances are, most of us who have chosen to teach in higher education did so because school came pretty naturally for us. The things that fascinated us – philosophy, history, literature – naturally led us into teaching. And we’re comfortable (perhaps only comfortable in) an academic environment. Is it fair, then, to assume that our students are comparably comfortable? That they know how to manage their workload, how to interpret our assignment instructions, how to apply our feedback?
- There are many metaphors used, and it’s interesting to me to see how people explain their metaphors, and how those metaphors may change over time. It’s also interesting that arguably, assessment is rarely singled out within these metaphors – so, we can use metaphor to explain what we think teaching is, and who we are as teachers, but the different metaphors don’t explore formative assessment. In fact, most seem to point to summative assessment as an inevitable end point – the produced play, the harvested crop, the cured patient. We need to consider how and where formative assessment, and iterative assessment, fit into our chosen metaphors.
- I think the most important aspect of this discussion is the realization that feedback – in my view, the thing that makes assessment work for learning – is a dialogue – and if we create meaning, and therefore learning, through social interaction, then feedback becomes the tool through which we create that meaning. Connection – identity is tied to assessment because who I believe I am as a teacher directly infuences – and is influenced by – my practice, and what I believe my practice should be. The way I assess is a reflection of what I have perceived as my role and my self as a teacher.
- In an effort to foster a stronger sense of collaboration and dialogue through our feedback, I asked my students to keep a dialogue journal, and responded to each entry with my own writing. The following slides are based on a survey I conducted with those students after the semester.
- Freedom to write whatever they wanted Being unconstrained, having room for creativity My response, and the dialogic nature of the journal The bonding nature of the exercise: since we were both involved in a direct exchange created a sense of genuine empathy Feeling that I knew them, and they knew me, better The freedom to ask questions that might otherwise not be asked in class Journals were cathartic and helpful The journals became, for many students, a safe place to write freely, about school stress, life, philosophy
- Not directly affected, but felt easier about talking to me because of the personal insights we had about each other through the journal Appreciated the sense of familiarity in the feedback on other work Felt like feedback on other written work was just another dialogue; the feedback felt just as personal as the journal responses Felt that they better understood my tone, and therefore found it easier to see what my comments meant, and where I was coming from in my feedback Really felt the journal dialogue was separate from other feedback
- Felt like our in-class relationship was more familiar and natural, less hierarchal. It felt like there was mutual respect between us The journals made this class more intimate, and made it different from other – still enjoyable – English courses. The journals helped some students stay on track, because they used the journals to explore ideas or ask questions related to course work The journal dialogue made some students feel more at ease in class, and more at ease approaching me, because of the relationship established through the journals. Students felt they could rely on me, that I would listen to them, and that the relationship challenged them to be better students
- The timing was a point to consider – one student noted that fifteen minutes in class sometimes felt too short, but at the same time, said that more class time would have taken time from other, more important classroom activities.