Teaching Through Communication and Feedback

What is Feedback

According to authors Greg C Lee and Cheng Chih-Wu "The provision of feedback to students is an important aspect of teaching and learning processes. It is often a necessary requirement for the stimulation of self‐reflection" (Leenm,Weinn; 2007). Feedback is defined by Webster dictionary as "information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc., used as  a basis for improvement." In lament terms it is the criticism of a person's work, whether positive or negative to increase productivity.  In the classroom  teachers  use feedback to create a  better learning atmosphere for them and their students and vice versa. "Among all instructional development efforts, the most promising way of fundamentally changing post-secondary teaching is to provide faulty with individualized formative feedback. In this process, information about an instructor's teaching is connected, summarized, and fed back to the faculty member.(Brinko, 2016)

What Is Communication

"Educators have become so involved with delivering the curricula that they forget to acknowledge 'how' they deliver the curricula." (Johnson, 1999) In the aforementioned statement Maeetta B. Johnson endeavors to bring up the discussion of how education has become void of  communication and overgrown with testing. According to Webster communication is the imparting or exchanging of information or news. Education is evolving in the sense teachers are using communication in their students learning experience. Tools such as discussion board,  participation grading,  and student rated feedback allow for open discussions in the classroom environment. Generally,student ratings may serve three functions: (1) aiding administrative evaluations of teaching effectiveness for decisions concerning pay increases, promotion, and tenure; (2) providing feedback to teachers for the purpose of improving instruction; and (3) helping students select courses and instructors. (Cohen, 1980)

Communication and Feedback in The Classroom

"Rick Wormelli author of the article "ACCOUNTABILITY: TEACHING THROUGH ASSESSMENT AND FEEDBACK, NOT GRADING" stated "Grading policies such as refusing to accept late work, giving grades of  such as refusing to accept late work, giving grades of zero, and refusing to allow students to redo their work may be intended as punishment for poor performance, but such policies will not really teach students to be accountable, and provide very little useful information about students' mastery of the material."  Students tend to learn and comprehend,  in contrast to memorization,  when they aren't concerned about testing. Often times students fear the test causing complications such as test anxiety, inability to digest material, even stress to the point of needing medical attention . Other classroom complications include the inability to comprehend intellectual languages. Dr. Robert Williams's B.I.T.C.H. Test discuss how African American testers score lower on test based on Caucasian dialect versus the counter of sciring exceedingly well when information and tests where communicated in terms privy to their culture. In the Article "Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale scores of Black and White police applicants" written by authors Joseph D. Matarazzo and , Arthur N. Wiens when completing their experiment there where "non-overlapping distributions of scores on the BITCH, with no White Ss scoring above Black Ss." This further solidifies that basing the classroom on communicative further opens the classroom dialect allowing students to provide feedback proving their level of understanding the material.

References

Brinko, K. T. (1993). The Practice of Giving Feedback to Improve Teaching: What Is Effective? The Journal of Higher Education, 64(5), 574.

Cohen, P. A. (1980). Effectiveness of student-rating feedback for improving college instruction: A meta-analysis of findings. Research in Higher Education, 13(4), 321-341. doi:10.1007/bf00976252

Johnson, M. B. (1998, November 30). Communication in the Classroom. Retrieved May 05, 2017, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED436802

Lee, G. C., & Wu, C. (2006). Enhancing the teaching experience of pre‐service teachers through the use of videos in web‐based computer‐mediated communication (CMC). Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 43(4), 369-380.

Matarazzo, J. D., & Wiens, A. N. (1977). Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale scores of Black and White police applicants. Journal of Applied Psychology,62(1), 57-63.

Wormeli, R. (summer 2006). ACCOUNTABILITY: TEACHING THROUGH ASSESSMENT AND FEEDBACK, NOT GRADING. AMERICAN SECONDARY EDUCATION, 34(3), 14-27