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LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083

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Author: search.filters.author.Heron, MarionHas files: Yes

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    Using genre analysis to design formative assessment in higher education
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-12-09) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, Marion
    Formative assessment (FA) is universally recognised as key to supporting student learning and success in higher education (HE). Despite this, summative assessment dominates HE students’ studies. We join an increasing call for more focus on formative assessment and propose an original professional development (PD) approach to help HE teachers design formative assessment tasks, using the concept of genre knowledge. Data from pre-workshop questionnaires, in-workshop activities and post workshop interviews demonstrate genre knowledge to be an effective heuristic to identify task requirements. This genre knowledge helps teachers design FA tasks which scaffold final summative assessments through focused development of specific areas of genre knowledge. We make recommendations on how teachers and trainers can use genre knowledge to raise awareness of and provide support for designing FA tasks which enhance student learning and success.
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    ‘Now you’ve said it, it’s like a big light bulb!’: enacting post observation feedback suggestions
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-08-14) Donaghue, Helen; Heron, Marion
    Teaching observations have become a ubiquitous feature of teacher education programmes, development schemes and assessment regimes. Whilst the processes and procedures of classroom observation are well documented, the feedback which follows teaching observations has been given less attention. Most research into teaching observations focuses on eliciting teachers’ perspectives on their experiences of being observed. In contrast, we examine two aspects vital to teacher development and enhanced teaching practice: (1) post observation feedback talk; (2) teachers’ enactment of feedback following the feedback session. This article argues that examining feedback talk and how talk may influence enactment can help both observers and teachers maximise the effectiveness of teaching observations. We focus on suggestions, a common way of helping teachers to develop and improve. We analyse empirical examples of authentic post observation feedback talk to explore how suggestions are made and responded to, identifying features of suggestions which prompt teacher understanding and enactment. Analysis enables us to provide observers with concrete advice on how to make suggestions, thus showing the practical affordances and methodological warrant of analysing feedback talk.
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    Developing Researcher Identity Through the PhD Confirmation
    (University of Wollongong Australia, 2023-05-29) Heron, Marion; Yakovchuk, Nadya; Donaghue, Helen
    The PhD confirmation, or upgrade stage, is a key requirement and rite of passage for most doctoral students. Yet despite its significance and high-stakes nature, little attention has been paid to students’ experiences of this stage of the PhD journey and how it influences the development of their researcher identity. Through semi-structured interviews with PhD students from a range of disciplines who had recently successfully completed the confirmation stage, we found that for many the confirmation stage was a catalyst for ‘feeling’ like a researcher through external validation, recognition and legitimacy. Students also developed their researcher identity through talking about their research with significant others. We argue for recognising the pivotal role the confirmation stage plays in developing doctoral students’ researcher identity and offer suggestions on how supervisors and researcher developers can support students through this transition.
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    Observational feedback literacy: designing post observation feedback for learning
    (Informa UK Limited, 2023-03-31) Heron, Marion; Donaghue, Helen; Balloo, Kieran
    The aim of teaching observations and post observation feedback in higher education is to support teachers to reflect on and improve their teaching. Yet, our understanding of tutors’ (observers’) and teachers’ (observees’) capacities for capitalising on these feedback opportunities is limited and there is little empirically derived advice for either the observer or the observee on the post observation feedback processes. We argue for the need to conceptualise and operationalise observational feedback literacy as a particular type of feedback literacy which is played out in both the design of the post observation feedback session, and in the moment-by-moment feedback talk. Drawing on the concept of student and teacher feedback literacies, this paper offers a framework of observational feedback literacy which identifies how observers and observees act in feedback literate ways. The framework foregrounds observer feedback literacy and recognises the importance of providing opportunities for observees to enact feedback.