Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 15 May 2016, 18:32
Teacher Marking as an invisible Dialogic Process
Why is that
many teachers (I include myself) feel that writing feedback commentary on the
work of learners is an uncomfortable process, akin to scarring a delicate
surface – a kind of violence done to the text? It is likely that this feeling
springs moreover from early experience of the academy – maybe first or primary
school. In my early youth teachers only ever used red ink for marking – a kind
of process that seems to revel in the blood of its victims. Of course, you can
take metaphors too far but I increasingly feel that it is necessary to begin to
be sensitive to the effects of written feedback and the meanings it shares with
its recipient and others. Ted Hughes it was claimed in a story often told that
he felt feedback marking as the mark of a bloody wolverine paw on the surface
of the exposition of meanings that, to him, mattered.
I feel this
strongly in studying Systemic Functional Grammatical Analysis (SFGA) in OU
course E845. One application of this analysis to which I am becoming
increasingly sensitive is the discernment of the ‘appropriateness’ of learner
writing to a proposed social function – whether that be writing work for
assessment, a job application or a piece of prose or poetry to place before an
evaluator – and perhaps all readers are that. In the version of SFGA in Coffin
et. al. (2009) such tasks are legion – often in the form of exercises to help a
learner become more ‘effective’, as well as ‘appropriate’, in their
appropriation of a symbolic exchange common to a particular culture.
My problem
with this was registered in an earlier
blog. I have since returned to it as I prepare for TMA04 concentrating on application
of SGBA skills and knowledge. Why do I suddenly feel vulnerable here? I don’t
especially value my own writing in TMAs.
I realised
that my feelings were sparked by the sense that feedback marking is often based
on a presumption of what you believe EITHER the writer intended to write OR had
been instructed in some culturally relevant rubric to write. Write an ‘essay’
or ‘report’ for instance! As I questioned my own marking of TMAs, I began to realise
how much commentary is about the acculturation of the learner into conventions
that, for me were culturally well embedded – perhaps even pieces of automatic process
learning stored deep in some cerebellar area.
Is SFGA
necessarily aiming to cause the eternal recreation of these genres and their
assumptions – many of which – like ‘balance’ in essays – have more to do with
ideology than, strictly speaking, appropriateness to form?
To answer my
immediate problems in E845, I had begun to read Martin & Rose (2008: 2ff.).
Here I began to read about Ben who, with his class were asked to ‘write’
without specific further instruction a piece for teacher to assess. In that
period – it was 1985 in Australia and Ben was 8 – Most learner writing took the
form of narrative recount. However, the pressure of that consensual agreement
on genre also formed expectations in primary school teachers of what it should
be ‘appropriate’ that learners at age 8 write.
This is what
Ben did write (ibid:45) but what we see on that writing is the fulfilment also
of an otherwise invisible dialogue already present in the learner’s text before
it was handed in to teacher – feedback. There are a number of ways teacher
feedback comments are differentiated from those of learners in these texts.
They appear in marginal space (especially page ends), they employ cursive
(joined-up) writing and are in straight lines with ‘appropriate’ punctuation.
But what do
these feedback comments answer in response to Ben’s attempt to dialogue? They assume Ben’s ‘failure’
to write appropriately i) in the expected location on the visual field that is a page and ii) in the genre
this teacher expects: ‘a story’. Even the multi-modal elements are presented
as, as yet, inappropriate – the picture must be finished. But how does the
teacher know whether, for Ben’s purposes it was not already finished? In fact Ben’s learning space is 'violated' – undermined in a multi-modally
received metaphor – the sum (what it adds up to) of his pages is a negative
comment.
And that
comment is about the refusal of Ben (or so it is read by the teacher) to create a ‘space’ for
teacher’s mind-set – the margin. This is an issue I find even more telling in
TMA feedback where so much of it is placed in marginal comment – a function of
Word designed to typecast the form of feedback in old channels.
Are there
ways in which we might feedback to Ben without violence to his developing
purposes as a writer? I think there are.
Some of that would be to mark achievements in this prose – not least in the
means by which it captures human perceptions of time-bound processes. Not for
instance how the new element added to the hyper-them ‘Earth started’ is taken
up as the theme of the third sentence: ‘Slowly
water formed’. The isolation of the ‘first man’ is perfectly complemented by
that ‘unfinished’ picture – unless you already know what to look for – what is appropriate!
What if teacher
feedback interpreted rather than merely described what Ben was doing? What if,
it gave guidelines for development rather than for precise regulation? What if ….?
I tail off because these are aspirations I have yet to show as a marker and I'm sure learners whose work I have marked will validate that.
Martin and
Rose (2008:5) point out that Ben’s parents were deeply concerned by what to the
teacher may have seemed innocent atonal feedback. I think maybe this trait in
assessment goes on and on and on. It will be justified by people saying: ‘But
we are preparing people for the world and its expectations as they are – not what they might be emergently ...’ However, we need to see that that act of preparation
is political not pedagogic – it is an assumption about the world, time and the
issue of change that we don’t absolutely
NEED to make.
Coffin, C.,
Donahue, J. & North, S. (2009) Exploring
English Grammar: From Formal to Functional Abingdon, Routledge.
Teacher Marking as an invisible Dialogic Process
Teacher Marking as an invisible Dialogic Process
Why is that many teachers (I include myself) feel that writing feedback commentary on the work of learners is an uncomfortable process, akin to scarring a delicate surface – a kind of violence done to the text? It is likely that this feeling springs moreover from early experience of the academy – maybe first or primary school. In my early youth teachers only ever used red ink for marking – a kind of process that seems to revel in the blood of its victims. Of course, you can take metaphors too far but I increasingly feel that it is necessary to begin to be sensitive to the effects of written feedback and the meanings it shares with its recipient and others. Ted Hughes it was claimed in a story often told that he felt feedback marking as the mark of a bloody wolverine paw on the surface of the exposition of meanings that, to him, mattered.
I feel this strongly in studying Systemic Functional Grammatical Analysis (SFGA) in OU course E845. One application of this analysis to which I am becoming increasingly sensitive is the discernment of the ‘appropriateness’ of learner writing to a proposed social function – whether that be writing work for assessment, a job application or a piece of prose or poetry to place before an evaluator – and perhaps all readers are that. In the version of SFGA in Coffin et. al. (2009) such tasks are legion – often in the form of exercises to help a learner become more ‘effective’, as well as ‘appropriate’, in their appropriation of a symbolic exchange common to a particular culture.
My problem with this was registered in an earlier blog. I have since returned to it as I prepare for TMA04 concentrating on application of SGBA skills and knowledge. Why do I suddenly feel vulnerable here? I don’t especially value my own writing in TMAs.
I realised that my feelings were sparked by the sense that feedback marking is often based on a presumption of what you believe EITHER the writer intended to write OR had been instructed in some culturally relevant rubric to write. Write an ‘essay’ or ‘report’ for instance! As I questioned my own marking of TMAs, I began to realise how much commentary is about the acculturation of the learner into conventions that, for me were culturally well embedded – perhaps even pieces of automatic process learning stored deep in some cerebellar area.
Is SFGA necessarily aiming to cause the eternal recreation of these genres and their assumptions – many of which – like ‘balance’ in essays – have more to do with ideology than, strictly speaking, appropriateness to form?
To answer my immediate problems in E845, I had begun to read Martin & Rose (2008: 2ff.). Here I began to read about Ben who, with his class were asked to ‘write’ without specific further instruction a piece for teacher to assess. In that period – it was 1985 in Australia and Ben was 8 – Most learner writing took the form of narrative recount. However, the pressure of that consensual agreement on genre also formed expectations in primary school teachers of what it should be ‘appropriate’ that learners at age 8 write.
This is what Ben did write (ibid:45) but what we see on that writing is the fulfilment also of an otherwise invisible dialogue already present in the learner’s text before it was handed in to teacher – feedback. There are a number of ways teacher feedback comments are differentiated from those of learners in these texts. They appear in marginal space (especially page ends), they employ cursive (joined-up) writing and are in straight lines with ‘appropriate’ punctuation.
But what do these feedback comments answer in response to Ben’s attempt to dialogue? They assume Ben’s ‘failure’ to write appropriately i) in the expected location on the visual field that is a page and ii) in the genre this teacher expects: ‘a story’. Even the multi-modal elements are presented as, as yet, inappropriate – the picture must be finished. But how does the teacher know whether, for Ben’s purposes it was not already finished? In fact Ben’s learning space is 'violated' – undermined in a multi-modally received metaphor – the sum (what it adds up to) of his pages is a negative comment.
And that comment is about the refusal of Ben (or so it is read by the teacher) to create a ‘space’ for teacher’s mind-set – the margin. This is an issue I find even more telling in TMA feedback where so much of it is placed in marginal comment – a function of Word designed to typecast the form of feedback in old channels.
Are there ways in which we might feedback to Ben without violence to his developing purposes as a writer? I think there are. Some of that would be to mark achievements in this prose – not least in the means by which it captures human perceptions of time-bound processes. Not for instance how the new element added to the hyper-them ‘Earth started’ is taken up as the theme of the third sentence: ‘Slowly water formed’. The isolation of the ‘first man’ is perfectly complemented by that ‘unfinished’ picture – unless you already know what to look for – what is appropriate!
What if teacher feedback interpreted rather than merely described what Ben was doing? What if, it gave guidelines for development rather than for precise regulation? What if ….?
I tail off because these are aspirations I have yet to show as a marker and I'm sure learners whose work I have marked will validate that.
Martin and Rose (2008:5) point out that Ben’s parents were deeply concerned by what to the teacher may have seemed innocent atonal feedback. I think maybe this trait in assessment goes on and on and on. It will be justified by people saying: ‘But we are preparing people for the world and its expectations as they are – not what they might be emergently ...’ However, we need to see that that act of preparation is political not pedagogic – it is an assumption about the world, time and the issue of change that we don’t absolutely NEED to make.
Coffin, C., Donahue, J. & North, S. (2009) Exploring English Grammar: From Formal to Functional Abingdon, Routledge.
Martin, J.R & Rose, D. (2008) Genre Relations: Mapping Culture London, Equinox Publishing.