Reflecting with S.A.R.A.

As an educator, and student, there are many times when I offer or receive feedback. Over the last few weeks I’ve been reflecting on how I receive feedback in the hope that I can offer feedback in a way that is constructive and kind, and useful to the recipient.

I am looking for feedback constantly. Not to flatter my ego but so that I can improve and develop. In my work as an Antenatal Teacher with NCT, reflective practice and evaluation play an important role, they stimulate and support each other (Neil, 2015). I need informal and formal feedback from the parents I teach so I know if I am meeting my Aims and Learning Outcomes. So I know if I am meeting their learning needs.

With my university students it’s a two way street. I offer them feedback informally on facilitation practice throughout the year and formally when I grade their assignments. They offer me feedback on whether I am meeting their learning needs so they can do their best work. If not, I adjust what I am doing and we reevaluate how we are doing.

It is easy to take feedback personally, as an attack on our selves rather than on a behaviour or a task, especially when we are not expecting it. Even the kindest given feedback can hurt. That’s where S.A.R.A. comes in. Being aware of our reactions to constructive feedback can help us deal with them. I offer an example of my reaction to some feedback I received a couple of years ago and how I worked through the S.A.R.A. curve. It doesn’t matter what the feedback was, my reaction was the interesting thing.

Shock: My initial reaction was disbelief. I couldn’t believe that they meant me. I didn’t understand how they could feel this way about me. I cried.

Anger: The shock quickly moved to anger. How dare they? I didn’t say that, or if I did I didn’t mean it like that, they’ve just misunderstood me! It was easy to move the focus of the feedback to the person who had fed back rather than me. After all, if they were ‘wrong’ I must be right.

It could have been very easy to get stuck in this part of the curve. Anger can last for days or even weeks in some cases. I stomped around and slammed some doors. I may have yelled at the cat. Luckily, according to Rogel (2010), the more extreme our shock and anger response to feedback, the more committed we are likely to be to change.

Resistance: Also known as denial or rejection. In my case I decided that I knew what I was doing so I could keep on doing it the same way. Personally this stage doesn’t usually last long, once i get over the anger and start to think logically, I move on to the acceptance stage.

Acceptance: This is the point where I began to ask what I needed to change. How could I adapt my behaviour to improve? How could I be and work better? I spoke to colleagues and mentors. I did my research and hopefully became a better educator. I used the gift of that feedback in a positive way.

Some feedback models also include an H for Honest Effort to accept the fact that even with a genuine willingness to change lapses might occur. It takes time to change habits and behaviours. We are, after all only human.

In my MA module, H818 – The Networked Practitioner, we are constantly offering and receiving feedback by working in the open. It feels very exposed, especially if you are struggling to catch up on work (everyone knows how behind you are) or need clarity on a concept. It’s also liberating in that everyone is in the same boat, as exposed as each other. It provides an honesty and clarity to feedback offered and received, and is always kindly given and genuinely welcomed.

So the next time you receive feedback, or offer it to another, be mindful of SARA(H).

References

Neil, H. (2015) The evaluation cycle: how students, practitioners and tutors can develop their understanding, preparation and practice, to enhance and enrich their work. Available from: https://babble.nct.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/The%20Evaluation%20Cycle_0.pdf

Rogel, C. (2010) Using the SARA Model to Learn from 360-Degree Feedback. Available from: https://www.decision-wise.com/using-the-sara-model-to-learn-from-360-degree-feedback

I need more guidance…

Often, when I am trying to write an assignment, as I should be doing now, I find myself floundering and not entirely sure what I should be doing. I feel I need more guidance. My own students are submitting drafts of an assignment and they are also asking for more guidance. Some have even openly voiced what I feel like saying to my own tutors, “JUST TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE!” (Sorry for shouting but that’s what it sounds like in my head.)

As a tutor I know there is a fine line between guidance and coaching. If you coach a student, tell them what to write or say, then you’ll never find out what they have actually learnt, and that’s before you get into Academic Integrity issues. So you try and gently guide them in the right direction. It’s a fine line between not enough guidance and too much. One module I worked on used to have twice as much written guidance on the assignment than the actual word count of the essay. It was done with the best of intentions but the result was some very confused students!

It’s interesting being a tutor and a student at the same time, as my first blog ‘That Student!’ illustrated. It’s providing me with some insights into my own behaviour and the behaviour of my own students. So, with that in mind, here’s some advice I’d give my own students if they were feeling like I am and wanted some more guidance.

Read the logbook/assignment guide. And then read it again. Every time you come to a ‘block’ or feel you don’t understand what you are being asked, go check.

Underline or highlight the key words in the assignment title. The key words are the ones that will relate to Blooms Taxonomy and the intended learning outcomes of the module or course. The image below gives some helpful explanation about what these words actually mean.

If there is a marking scheme or a grid read it carefully. It would be a shame if you wrote 1000 words on topic ‘A’ when only 5/50 marks of the 2500 word essay were for topic ‘A’, and 45/50 marks for topics ‘B’.

If you are still confused, talk to your peers. One of the advantages of working openly in my current OU module is that I can see what others are doing. The advantage of this is if I am really stuck there is normally someone ahead of me, I can look at to see how they have approached a question. We have the advantage of all working on different topics, so little chance of accidentally plagiarising. The downside of this is that we could ALL be doing the wrong thing, but it’s unlikely. If you aren’t working openly with other students then ask on a student forum for the broad approaches to an assignment or phone a friend. Talk it through. It helps.

If you still need guidance, ask your tutor, preferably in an open forum as you’re probably aren’t the only one confused, you’re just the first one to ask. From a tutor perspective this also means you will, probably, only have to answer that particular question once.

If you can, submit a draft. Your tutor will hopefully provide some feedback that will guide the direction of the final assignment.

So with that in mind, back to writing my assignment taking my own advice.

And yes, I have a post all about procrastinating in my head, but I’ll save it till I have something ‘really’ important to write!

What I do…

I’m often asked what I do. And my answer is often vague. I’ll mention that I work with parents to explore birth and early parenting, then I might say I also teach yoga for pregnant women, and also for postnatal women with their babies. I will mention I work for NCT, and then have to explain that it used to be called National Childbirth Trust. It is the UK’s largest parenting charity, and makes a difference to thousands of parents every year. It’s campaigned over the years on issues such as Dads’ being allowed in labour rooms to support their partners , women being able to feed their babies in public and, most recently, perinatal mental health with the Hidden Half campaign.

Hold on! I hear you say. I thought you worked for a university, how does that fit in with Birth and Parenting education?

Ah yes, I’m an Associate Lecturer with University of Worcester. I work with an amazing group of women to train NCT Practitioners to work with parents before and after they have their babies. It’s a foundation degree course and taught across the UK. In order to become a NCT tutor I had to study adult education in some depth over several years, as well as being an experienced NCT practitioner in my own right. It led to a second degree (see graduation photo above) and a Postgraduate Degree in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

I’m not surprised if you haven’t heard about how NCT trains it’s practitioners. We are, as an educational organisation, not great at telling the world what we do. Perhaps NCT Education suffers a little from impostorism at an organisational level. NCT tutors are educators and academics. We have decades of experience in adult learning, group theory and facilitation theory. We are reflective practitioners at every level, grounded in evidence led educational practice. But we don’t share this with the world. A few of my colleagues have published articles and papers about our work, but they are the exception. When we look for evidence about adult learning we look outside our own organisation. Yet we know how adults learn. We see it in our own practice all the time. We underrate our experiences and knowledge.

This weekend I was at our annual Education and Practice Weekend and I had the opportunity to speak to my colleagues about my current studies. I had been inspired by thinking around open pedagogy and digital scholarship. I mapped Bronwen Hegarty’s attributes of Open Pedagogy (2015) against NCT educational practice and showed my colleagues the many parallels to how we work. I then asked them to consider how they could work more openly? What might be the benefits and risks? How they could share their knowledge and experience with a wider academic audience? To my surprise they were enthusiastic and open to the ideas I proposed and I look forward to reading and sharing their contributions to adult learning and education theory.

In future, I hope that when I’m asked what I do, no one is surprised by NCT’s academic side. That we become known, not just by our contributions to birth and parenting but for our depth and breadth of knowledge about how adults learn.

‘That’ student…

It’s been a very busy week. I’ve been travelling around the country in my educator role to assess student practical assignments, and I had my own assignment deadline in the latest module of my MA in Online and Distance Education (MAODE) with The Open University.

This morning, as I was reflecting on how my week had gone, and indulging in a some self-critical thought, I realised that I was ‘that‘ student.

You know the one I mean. The one who always just meets a deadline and has a suitcase of excuses as to why they submit rushed work. The one who despite being told many times hasn’t read the logbook or the assignment guidance fully. The one who could probably be an ‘A’ student if they just planned a little better.

As an educator I am frustrated by these students. I know that a rushed piece of work makes it more likely that a student will drop ‘easy’ marks to grammar, spelling or referencing mistakes, and even to plagarise accidentally. When you are up against a deadline there is less time to proof read and sanity check. I long to tell them that if they just planned a bit better, or read ahead, or gave themselves some thinking space, they would make their lives so much easier.

I wish I could take my own advice.

Instead, I made last week incredibly stressful for myself and my family. I worked on trains and in stations, and every spare minute I could find to ‘pull it out the hat’. I’m pretty sure I was a cow to my husband, and I burst into tears in front of my own students! I wasn’t sure of the direction the assignment was meant to take, but felt I couldn’t approach my tutor at this late stage. I should probably have asked for an extension, but that felt like defeat. I submitted, under the word count but I’d had enough, a piece of work that is far from the best I could do.

I wish I could say this was the first time. I tell the tale of how I once, back when essays were still submitted in hard copy, of driving two hours on the submission date to post an essay through the door of a tutor in order to meet the 3pm deadline. It was not my finest moment.

So, I’m making a pact with myself. To be less ‘that’ student, to plan more, to be kinder to myself. To ask for help. Otherwise I’m going to be stuck in this pattern forever.