Strategies for Enhancing the Impact of Post-Observation Feedback for Teachers

Across the country, districts are committing to observing, assessing, and giving feedback to teachers multiple times a year. Currently, school systems are dedicating an enormous amount of effort to accumulating data on teachers, but the field still has a lot to learn about how best to use data to support the improvement of teaching. This brief, the result of a 90-day cycle, examines the features of post-teacher-observation feedback conversations between principals and teachers that orient teachers for receptivity and learning. The authors focused specifically on teachers' conversations with their principals because many of the current teacher evaluation policy reforms place principals in the feedback-giving role, despite the limited guidance available on how this can be done well. The experience of receiving feedback from a supervisor is qualitatively different from receiving feedback from a peer, colleague, or other whose judgments are not as consequential. Feedback from supervisors certainly can produce more anxiety. The following are appended: (1) Feedback Conversation Protocol: Principal; and (2) Feedback Conversation Protocol: Teacher. A bibliography is included.