Face-to-Face Feedback Is Vastly Superior to Written Feedback
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses Kim Marshall's argument that teacher feedback should be delivered in person through conversation, not through written observation reports.
Key Takeaways
- Written feedback often goes unread - Teachers frequently file away written observation reports without deeply engaging with them
- Conversation enables dialogue - Face-to-face feedback allows for questions, clarification, and genuine professional learning
- Brief conversations beat lengthy reports - A focused 5-minute conversation is more likely to change practice than a detailed written report
Transcript
Should administrators give written feedback after an observation?
Kim Marshall has a new article in Edutopia in which he argues that the feedback that teachers receive after being observed should be face to face.
It should be a personal face to face conversation, not written feedback.
So check out this article.
I think I mostly agree with Kim here.
And Kim Marshall is the author of Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation and really one of the people I look up to the most in this profession.
When it comes to instructional leadership, he makes a really good case that people don't really change their practice as a result of written feedback.
And written feedback can go wrong in a lot of different ways.
And I would love to know what your experience has been with that.
So have you ever received written feedback that was really good, that was really helpful?
Leave a comment and let me know.
My experience has been that for the most part, people change their practice by talking about their practice.
It's not what we put in writing that makes a big difference.
People still like positive notes.
If you leave a nice note for someone, they will treasure it, they will save it, and that can be a great thing.
But it's not the written suggestions that make a difference.
And in fact, written suggestions can really send us in the wrong direction.
One, because we don't always know what to suggest until we've talked with the teacher.
Better feedback comes from a conversation than just if we observe and have to write something down without talking with the teacher.
So I think Kim is mostly right on track here.
Where I would differ a little bit is I think it can be valuable to take notes while you're observing.
And Kim says some very interesting things about observation notes, that they're not always as objective as they seem, like sometimes there is a criticism in them.
He says, when a supervisor sends low inference notes and expectation in many schools, a comment that is supposed to be objective, like Danny had his head on the desk, can be heard as criticism.
And I refer to notes like that, you know, factual statements that have a little bit of an implication behind them as barbed facts, right?
There's a little bit of a jab there.
Why did Danny have his head on the desk?
Oh, only 17 students out of 28 were paying attention.
Well, there's some criticism implied there.
And I think there's not a lot of point in doing that and trying to frame it as objective documentation.
I think if we're going to take objective notes, low inference notes, we should not try to embed any kind of criticism in them.
I think there are things that are relevant to document, but we should know what we're doing if we say something that we intend to be negative.
So check this article out in Edutopia by Kim Marshall.
Great discussion of feedback conversations and avoiding written feedback.
Let me know what you think.