Module 3.

Session 3. Feedback

Remember, everyone is trying their best!

No one makes mistake on purpose! Your learner drivers will not get it right all of the time, neither will you; it serves no purpose to ‘blame’ the learner driver for their mistakes. Although instructors and trainers might not think that they are ‘blaming’, that could easily be the learner drivers interpretation.

If a mistake is made the job of the instructor is to find out the reason and then take appropriate action to help ensure that the error isn’t repeated.

Whatever the cause of a mistake, the best starting point is to ask yourself: “What could I have done differently as an instructor to prevent it happening?” The answer to this question might be fundamental to the feedback that you offer.

This exercise assumes that the mistakes were not as a result of poor route planning, poor instruction, or any other input by the trainer/instructor.

During this exercise, you should start to learn the importance of effective feedback and encouragement and how to give or elicit such feedback.

Feedback is essential for learning development and has the power to motivate the learner driver learner or to totally demoralise and depress. For driving instructors their feedback skills (or lack of) it can mean the difference between future success or failure.

But be aware beware!

Many instructors could do much to improve their own feedback skills by practising what they preach in this exercise!

Albert Einstein said “The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know.”

All too often the worst feedback comes from instructors following poor performance from students. However, the root of the poor performance has often been the appropriateness of the initial task set by the trainer, poor description or demonstration of a task or lack of support.

Giving feedback

It is important to note that feedback is not simply related to errors or problems/weaknesses, it is also essential to highlight the learner’s strong points and positive development.

The DVSA state that:

“All feedback should be relevant, positive and honest. It is not helpful if the pupil is given unrealistic feedback which creates a false sense of their own ability. Where possible, feedback should not be negative. Rather than saying somebody has a weakness, consider expressing it as a learning opportunity. However, if they need to be told something is wrong or dangerous there is no point in waffling. The pupil should have a realistic sense of their own performance.”

Ideally, feedback will initially be elicited from the driver thus developing self-evaluation skills and effective judgement of his/her own performance.

Think about this example below:

Spellink

In a spelling lesson when asked to spell the word ‘spelling’ the pupil writes ‘spellink’.

Clearly this is an incorrect spelling. But remember that the pupil is in a spelling lesson, he/she is not doing a spelling test.

With this in mind which of the following will be most useful to motivate the pupil and to make the task of achieving the correct spelling next time?

Teacher 1: “Sorry that’s the wrong answer, you’ll have to try harder to learn the word and then have another go.”

Teacher 2: “Well done, your almost there. You’ve got seven letters correct out of eight – we just need to change one letter, and it will be easy to remember because it’s the last one in the word.”

Which teacher would you prefer to have for your spellink lessons?

In a lesson with a learner driver most positive development can be made by allowing your learner driver to think about their performance, analyse their efforts and help them recognise areas for improvement - positivity based learning.

By asking how a student thinks they did at a task will help them analyse it.  If most of it was good then that is a positive step forward.  By asking the learner driver to tell you where they thought they could improve or do better will help them comfortably own the solution and work in a positive manner to develop and rectify errors.

The best feedback a learner driver will get and often the one they will remember is the one they gave themselves.  As a driving instructor you can achieve this through well balanced and targeted Q and A.