With the exception of 360-degree assessments – and they are not really 360 - evaluation in most organisations is top-down. Conceptually this is flawed because evaluation should emanate from the people that the product/service/person affects the most and in education that is obviously the students.
It’s perplexing that during the period when my three children were in formal education, not once were they asked their opinion about the school or the teachers.
In business the ethos of customer-obsession or customer-centricity is robust because everything is a by-product of the customer experience. Swap in “student” for customer so that school evaluation systems, including those ot teachers, innovation and operations are driven by the holistic student experience.
In other words, be obsessed with the holistic student experience then reverse engineer.
In our organisation we use a 360 degree review for teachers. Teacher (leader and peer) classroom observations and review of student data are formative processes. These may indirectly influence perception on 360 degree reviews but are not directly linked to the evaluation.
Our review process also includes student feedback, but again this is a formative process.
This is an interesting and important subject because everybody needs feedback - the worst kind being no feedback at-all!
My biggest takeaway from the years I spent in corporate was that reviews were riddled with bias. For example, it’s human nature for friendly peers to give friendly reviews to colleagues. Conversely, some peers may see work colleagues as competition and that is then reflected in their review. Also, and this is clearly the opposite of what any leader should do, is that hierarchical superiors sometimes don’t want to see too much positive light shone upon their staff members. 360’s are meant to balance things out but bias is a fundamental human flaw which is difficult to overcome.
Like most things in life, review processes are imperfect but if I had to lean in any direction, it would be more towards the view of the student, not least of all because there’s an honesty aspect to young people’s opinions that is hard to rival.
True. On a related note, trying to use student feedback systematically and fairly too comes with challenges, for example students for some teachers are 4 year olds, but for others they are 16 year olds :)
Which is why we have used them as feedback for improvement but stayed away from evaluative contexts. We are still learning!
With the exception of 360-degree assessments – and they are not really 360 - evaluation in most organisations is top-down. Conceptually this is flawed because evaluation should emanate from the people that the product/service/person affects the most and in education that is obviously the students.
It’s perplexing that during the period when my three children were in formal education, not once were they asked their opinion about the school or the teachers.
In business the ethos of customer-obsession or customer-centricity is robust because everything is a by-product of the customer experience. Swap in “student” for customer so that school evaluation systems, including those ot teachers, innovation and operations are driven by the holistic student experience.
In other words, be obsessed with the holistic student experience then reverse engineer.
Great points Carl.
In our organisation we use a 360 degree review for teachers. Teacher (leader and peer) classroom observations and review of student data are formative processes. These may indirectly influence perception on 360 degree reviews but are not directly linked to the evaluation.
Our review process also includes student feedback, but again this is a formative process.
This is an interesting and important subject because everybody needs feedback - the worst kind being no feedback at-all!
My biggest takeaway from the years I spent in corporate was that reviews were riddled with bias. For example, it’s human nature for friendly peers to give friendly reviews to colleagues. Conversely, some peers may see work colleagues as competition and that is then reflected in their review. Also, and this is clearly the opposite of what any leader should do, is that hierarchical superiors sometimes don’t want to see too much positive light shone upon their staff members. 360’s are meant to balance things out but bias is a fundamental human flaw which is difficult to overcome.
Like most things in life, review processes are imperfect but if I had to lean in any direction, it would be more towards the view of the student, not least of all because there’s an honesty aspect to young people’s opinions that is hard to rival.
True. On a related note, trying to use student feedback systematically and fairly too comes with challenges, for example students for some teachers are 4 year olds, but for others they are 16 year olds :)
Which is why we have used them as feedback for improvement but stayed away from evaluative contexts. We are still learning!