AFTER: How do I review my teaching and reflect on the next steps?

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It’s time for some R&R. For us, that means to review and reflection.

This is the last thing. You have to think about what you’ve done in this programme and reflect on different parts of it. You don’t need to be doing advanced academic qualifications or read a lot of research to be a reflective teacher.

Reflective teaching is simply the process where you think about your teaching practice and analyse how you did. The idea is to look at where you can improve or change what you’re doing to get better learning outcomes.

If you’re like most of the people who do work in foundation education, you are probably reflecting on what you do all the time. In this next part, we want to make this process visible. Once it’s visible you can use it as evidence to finish off the NZCALNE (Voc).

Here’s what we’re going to ask you to do:

Review your teaching

This includes your reflections and thoughts on:

  • What went well.
  • What you’d you do differently.
  • How you managed the delivery
  • Any collaboration with learners and supervisor
  • Any comments on the learners’ evaluation
  • Anything unexpected.

Reflect on what you need to do moving forward

This includes your reflections and thoughts on:

  • Any key changes and improvements you might make.
  • What kind of goals you might set for these learners from here.
  • What the implications are now for designing your teaching and learning.

All we need to do this then is a set of questions for you to think about and answer. These questions are in the final section of your template for Assessment 7. We’ve also given you sentence starters as well to get you going. You can ignore these if you want.

If you know what you’re doing, you can just write up your reflections in the assessment template now. If you need some time to think about them, the questions are listed next.

AFTER: Can you remind me what evaluation evidence I need to supply for the NZCALNE (Voc)?

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Let’s pause for a moment and take stock of what you should be collecting as evaluation evidence for Assessment 7 of the NZCALNE (Voc).

You still have to do your own final review, but by now you should have collected two kinds of evaluation evidence.

One lot of evidence is from your learner and takes the form of learner evaluations. The other is comments from your supervisor. There’s a separate checklist for this as discussed.

Here’s it is again below. This checklist is also in the template for Assessment 7:

Checklist of Information supplied as supporting evidence

Learner evaluations

  • These should be scanned or supplied digitally in some way.
  • You should have evaluations for at least two learners.

Supervisor comments

  • These should also be scanned or supplied digitally. We have a template for this as well. You can find it in the Assessment 7 module.

Coming up next is the last piece of work. This is your own final review and a place to reflect on what went well, what you’d you do differently and how you managed the delivery.

AFTER: Why do I have to involve my boss in the evaluation?

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Collaborating with your boss or supervisor to review your teaching delivery is one of the requirements of the NZCALNE (Voc). It’s also good teaching practice. We can’t sign off on the whole qualification unless we have some evidence of this.

For our purposes, a supervisor may include any of the following:

  • Your direct manager or programme leader.
  • A colleague that is acting as study support person.
  • Someone in management that has already acted as a verifier for another part of this training and qualification.

What does this evidence need to include?

We need evidence that you and your supervisor have reviewed the teaching and facilitation in the following areas:

  • Your strengths.
  • Any potential improvements for future delivery.
  • Any comments on how this informs planning for your professional development

This review should be a collaboration and conversation. It could include teaching observation evidence, but it doesn’t have to.

What do I have to ask my supervisor to do?

If you’re about to finish off your NZCALNE (Voc), you need to include some feedback from your supervisor. It’s one of the requirements.

The easiest way to involve your supervisor or boss is simple to ask for a few minutes of their time. Hopefully, they already know how you’re doing and where you’re up to. They may have already verified your portfolio evidence for other parts of the course. However, when you get a chance, you need to:

  • Bring them up to date with the latest on your embedded literacy and numeracy project work
  • Discuss the results of your learners’ work, assessments and evaluations.

Then as evidence for this programme, your supervisor will need to summarise their responses in the Supervisor Comments template. You can find the full template in the assessment module for Collection 7.

For now, here is a list of the questions that your supervisor will need to respond to. We’ve provided prompts and sentence starters for your supervisor to use as well, but they can ignore them if they want to. Download the full template in the assessment section for this Collection.

Supervisor review questions and prompts

1. When did you collaborate on this review?

Our conversation took place on…

2. What are their strengths?

One strength is…

Another strength…

3. What are some potential improvements for future delivery?

One possible improvement could be…

Another potential improvement relates to…

4. How does any of this inform planning for the candidate’s professional development?

In terms of future professional development…

 

AFTER: What does a learner evaluation survey look like?

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Below you’ll find a generic evaluation survey that you may be able to adapt for your own purposes.

There are two pages. One has questions based around a 5-point rating scale. It looks like this:

The other has open questions like we discussed earlier and looks like this:

You can adapt or modify one or both pages depending on what you need for your context.

Remember: for obvious reasons, if it’s your class you probably need to get a different trainer, tutor, staff member, or another independent person to carry out this kind of evaluation for you. And don’t forget to adapt the questions to the level of your learners.

 

AFTER: Should I get help to administer the evaluation to my learners?

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There are lots of things to think about before you go ahead and do the evaluation with your learners. Here are a few questions that you need to ponder:

  • Is their level of literacy going to impact on their ability to do the evaluation?
  • Do they need a translator?
  • Does anyone need a reader-writer?
  • Would this work better as a group evaluation?
  • Can we use pictures instead of words for any of this?

Depending on the level of your learners, you may need someone to do the evaluation with them. If your learners are refugees or migrants with very little spoken or written English you may need to involve a translator. Or someone with dyslexia type issues may need a reader-writer.

Also, if the evaluation happens verbally, you need to think through whether a group approach is going to help the process or cause some learners to keep their thoughts to themselves.

If you’re going to stick with a written format, you might be able to usual some visual prompts instead of words. For example, some ESOL tutors and others use thumbs up-thumbs down type images rather than using words like “agree” or “disagree” in a rating scale.

1. Circle the best answer for you

Smiley, sad faces or emoticons also work in the same way.

1. Circle the best answer for you

 

AFTER: What’s the best way to write my own evaluation survey questions?

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Using a rating scale

One often-used question type used in surveys and evaluations is called Likert scale. This usually has 3, 5 or 7 points that people can choose from.

A typical question item in a Likert scale is a statement. The learner is asked to indicate his or her degree of agreement with the statement. For example:

  1. Choose the best answer to each statement below.

If you want to get fancy, you can assign a value to each of the answers (e.g. 0 to 4 or 1 to 5). This gives you a way of scoring each completed evaluation.

Using open-ended questions

A simple approach to evaluation is also to pose some open-ended questions. Learners can respond to these in writing on their own, or they can be floated for group discussion. Here’s an example:

1. What did you enjoy or find most helpful?

2. What did you find challenging or difficult?

3. What should we change? Any improvements?

If you expect your learners to write their responses, make sure that you leave enough room. Also, budget your time for this wisely. Don’t expect to get the kind of detail you want at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon.

AFTER: How should I carry out my learner evaluations?

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One standard method, if it’s appropriate to your learners’ literacy levels, is to use some kind of evaluation questionnaire. This should be anonymous if possible. Learners or trainees should have the option to reflect on your teaching without fear of penalty.

You can do an evaluation survey like this either verbally, with a paper-based format or with online technology.

Verbal evaluation

If you have low-level learners, or if you know that writing the responses is going to be a barrier you may need to get another tutors or workmate to help carry out a verbal evaluation. This means that someone will need to ask the evaluation questions and record student answers.

This can work in a group setting or individually. If you do this in a group setting, you need to make sure that all members of the group feel that it is a safe environment to speak up as they need to. If this is not the case, you may need someone to speak with each learner individually and interview them if you want to get useful evaluation data.

Paper-based evaluation

A paper-based format is straightforward and most people will have tried something like this at some stage if they’ve been teaching for a while. The usual process is for an independent person to distribute the questionnaire while you are out of the room. The same person then collects the questionnaires which are sealed in an envelope.

Online survey

If using computers and other technology is not going to be a barrier, you can create online evaluations. You can make the online version identical to a paper version. Or if it’s appropriate, you can make online evaluations more detailed using branching question technology to glean more information from the student.

If you want to experiment with online surveys make sure that you keep in mind the computer skills of your learners. If you want to have a play though, check out some of the following sites that will allow you to make online surveys. The basics are usually free:

  • Survey Monkey.
  • Polldaddy.
  • Google Forms.

Which of these would work for you and your learners?

  • Verbal evaluation
  • Paper-based survey questions
  • Online evaluation.