Reflection about feedback given

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The unexpected lessons from this step in the process!

Kuhlthau's Guided Inquiry (2007) supports the notion of a community of learners where the instructional team and students learn together AND learn from one another. Allowing for others to view and provide responses about your work is a valuable part of the Guided Inquiry process.

My first response (I will bravely admit!) to the thought of receiving feedback from my peers AND then having to make changes to what I thought I had worked enough on was not worth repeating! However, as I took those first steps and started to read their essays I discovered that there were other ways to approach the essay. I found that I had used things or had learnt things that may be useful to share with them. I couldn't wait to see what they would think of my "attempt" (I had acknowledged now that it was a draft and not the final version). For the first time I was looking critically at the content and structure of my peer's essays and it was triggering the same reflections about my own work.

Once my feedback was received, I was able to see my essay from the perspective of someone else's eyes.  Suggestions such as, "Could the sentence be reworded to put the emphasis on the negotiated nature of the assessment item?" and "Is there a need here to talk about evaluation and reflection?" forced me to read my work through the eyes of my audience. Without the prompt, I would not have realised that the meaning could be enhanced by these changes. Questions by my colleagues enabled me to change the order of my paragraphs as they queried the importance of some points ahead of others and the logical flow of ideas. 

When reflecting upon this process I can now see that I benefitted not only from receiving the feedback but also in giving the feedback too. This was a very valuable part of the process for me and one that would be often overlooked at the end of an inquiry. The effect of feedback from and to the learning community is very powerful and some of the advantages that I can identify from it are:

1. Increased understandings
2. Knowledge base increased
3. New knowledge constructed
4. Own work is viewed from a different perspective
5. Collaborative skills enhanced
6. Sharing of knowledge and skills with others
7. Fostered critical thinking
8. Developed deep learning
9. Helped identify further questions and problems to solve

This process would also be valuable with children and would need to be modelled to students and gradually built upon from year to year. We need to teach our children to think critically and collaborate with one another. To collaborate and learn from one another is a life long learning skill.