Kilbourn, Keating, Murray, & Ross Balancing Feedback and Inquiry: How Novice Supervisors Learn

Balancing Feedback and Inquiry: How Novice Observers (Supervisors) Learn from Inquiry into Their Own Practice.
By Brent Kilbourn, Catherine Keating, Karen Murray, and Irene Ross

Kilbourn, B., Keating, C., Murray, K., & Ross, I. (2005). Balancing feedback and inquiry: How novice observers (supervisors) learn from inquiry into their own practice. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 20(4), 298-318.
 
"Preservice teachers and beginners typically find that the amount and quality of feedback are less than they had hoped (p. 298)." Why is that? Is it perception? Are they looking for judgments rather than feedback? Is feedback a judgment?

Novice observers need to develop an inquiry stance. "If learning the process is treated as a matter of personal inquiry rather than as a set of procedures to be mechanically applied, then novice observers may become better able to provide constructive feedback (p. 299)."

Constructive Feedback and Inquiry
•    The goal is to help teachers develop an inquiry stance. The observer, through the process of inquiry, tries to help the teacher learn to self-monitor.
•    Data should be used as a conversation catalyst. The conversation should be free of judgments from the observer and full of judgments from the teacher.

Case 1: Terri with a Student Teacher
•    Found difficulty in balancing giving advice with fostering inquiry

Case 2: Jane with a Community College Teacher

Case 3: Ann with an Experienced Teacher
"Skill at inquiry involves perceiving relevant bits of data and connecting them to each other and to the larger history of the situation (p. 313)."
•    Novice supervisors struggle with the balance between too much analysis and superficial chat with minimal analysis.
•    "A complex process like constructive feedback is learned over a professional lifetime, and a reasonable expectation is that the early stages of learning to give feedback with not be smooth - that mistakes made are unremarkable (p. 316)."

Conclusion