Why Administrators Give Teachers Such Bad Feedback
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder identifies the root cause of bad feedback from administrators: they don't spend enough time in classrooms to have anything meaningful to say.
Key Takeaways
- It's an information problem - Administrators who rarely visit classrooms lack the information needed to give good feedback
- Brief, frequent visits solve it - Getting into classrooms regularly gives leaders the context they need for meaningful conversations
- Bad feedback comes from bad data - When your only classroom visit is the annual formal observation, you don't know enough to help
Transcript
Feedback from an administrator is likely to be bad feedback.
Let's talk about why.
I'm a big fan of classroom walkthroughs.
I'm an expert on teacher evaluations and observations and that whole process.
But my work in this area has led me to conclude that most feedback is not good feedback right you already have thought of what the suggestion is going to be you have already tried the idea you have thought of it and then decided not to do it like the idea that an administrator is going to come in and have a better idea than the teacher who actually planned the lesson than the teacher who has probably taught this lesson multiple times like the idea that just being a separate set of eyes and not having the expertise in that grade or subject area not having the experience actually teaching those lessons like the idea that you're going to have better ideas than the teacher who's in charge, like doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
So I think we've got to approach instructional leadership with humility.
And I really didn't have much of a choice when I was a principal because I was new.
I didn't know that much.
I didn't have experience at the elementary level and I was an elementary principal.
So I was kind of forced into this posture of humility where I just literally didn't know what to tell people.
And I think when we do have some more experience and expertise, like the longer we stay in the job, the maybe the longer a teaching career you've had prior to becoming an administrator, the more likely it is that we gain overconfidence in our feedback, and we think, you know what, other people just need to listen to me.
The problem is not one of expertise, though.
It's one of just available information.
You can't give good feedback based on inadequate information.
And if you don't know where things are in the unit, if you don't know where, you know, how the curriculum is designed, if you don't know what happened in yesterday's lesson...
if you don't know what's going on with particular kids, it is very easy for your feedback to be off base.
So I think of feedback in an entirely different way from like suggestions and criticisms.
Like, hey, why don't you do this?
Hey, didn't you think of that?
That kind of stuff is not very valuable to me.
The kind of feedback that is valuable is a conversation.
is a dialogue between an administrator who is an additional set of eyes, who can see things, who can notice things that maybe the teacher can't notice when they're teaching, and then the teacher who is the expert on their own practice.
Let me know what you think.