Developing their teaching practice and culture of feedback
Following their latest Pivot cycle, we spoke with Paul Cornell, Year 2 Teacher at Rollins Primary School, about how data from the Student Perception Survey on Teaching Effectiveness is used to develop teaching and learning and create a culture of feedback.
Deciding to use Pivot’s Student Perception Survey on Teaching Effectiveness
Student voice data in our Attitudes to School Survey was consistently lower than we would have liked, indicating that student voice was only ingrained at 56%. Our Deputy Principal had previously worked at a school where student voice was ingrained at a much higher rate and so we began to question if there was a way for us to gather specific data that could help staff to realise the power of student perceptions. In 2018, we came across Pivot and we have been using the Student Perception Survey on Teaching Effectiveness ever since.
Using Pivot data to inform school-wide approach to teaching and learning
Since introducing Pivot, student voice has become a driving motivator and a key action within our Annual Implementation Plan. In addition to this, it is expected that every teacher uses their Pivot results during their Performance and Development Plan discussions.
Our earliest Pivot results showed that students lacked resilience and as a result, we engaged The Resilience Project to work with the whole school community. Our results have also shown that behaviour expectations were not clearly embedded throughout the whole school. To address this we planned and implemented a whole school behaviour matrix, where we put on emphasis on positive behaviour expectations.
Developing a culture of feedback
Every Semester, we share feedback on the whole school results to the staff and conduct professional development on a particular area of growth highlighted in our results.
All staff are encouraged to share their Pivot results with their class and to explicitly talk about their goals as a teacher. To support this, we have filmed a teacher sharing their results and using the Classroom Results and Worksheet with their class in order to model effective feedback conversations with students.
We also have two staff members who take responsibility for student voice across our school. They support staff in interpreting their Pivot results and having feedback conversations with students.
Celebrating strengths
After each survey cycle, we share the whole school strengths with staff in writing through emails and during leadership and staff meetings.
Going forwards, we are planning to share our results with the broader community via our school newsletter. We are also going to ask students to make short videos about the great things happening in their classrooms, with the intent of sharing these videos across classes and the community.
