Timely | Appropriate Feedback That Sticks

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Hi there, I'm Sarah Hart, Director of Drive Heart, and I'm joined today by Julie Clayton.
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Hi, who's the other director of Drive Heart?
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We're going to cover Teaching and Learning 3 in today's podcast.
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And that is all about appropriate and timely feedback.
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So we're going to cover six individual points relating to this subject.
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And we're going to start obviously with number one, and that is how we respond to incidents and how we respond to our students' questions during the lesson.
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So the first thing to say is that if your student has a question, it is absolutely critical that you respond.
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Now, you might not be able to dig into detail with the answer to the question right there and then because it might not be appropriate.
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But the key thing is that you acknowledge the question, and if you can't give a quick answer that's suitable on the move, then you say, I haven't forgotten your question.
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We'll come back to that at a suitable time.
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The other thing is when something happens, how you respond again is critical.
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You might respond by being able to discuss a situation on the move, maybe with QA to your student, maybe giving them some detail about some issues.
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But it might be that you have to pull up, stop, and unpack the situation at the side of the road.
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Some PDIs make the mistake of trying to unpack something on the move when they're coming into a hazardous situation.
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Now that is that is really not great for the student because they're, on one hand, they're trying to listen to you and absorb what you're saying as the instructor, but of course they're they're marching in towards a situation that needs their full attention.
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It might be that you've started unpacking on the move, and at that point it's all clear ahead and it's a good time to unpack, but then a situation develops.
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At that point, it's critical that you say, okay, well, forget that.
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Let's concentrate ahead.
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You know, what are you going to do about the situation ahead or what's happening ahead?
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So you can start a conversation and dump it, but it's really important again that you do come back to it.
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So you might want to tag it.
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So we just summarised so far then.
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Your initial response has got to be timely to the event, otherwise you'll lose the learning, yeah?
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Absolutely, yeah.
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But you have to weigh up whether or not you can actually safely unpack something on the move, or if it requires you to pull over and stop.
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Yes.
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And essentially you the balance there is how busy it is, how complex the subject is that you're trying to unpack, isn't it?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean it might be a situation that you need to get your pen and paper or your magnetic board out, and obviously you can't do that on the move.
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But if it's just a quick conversation, then that might be able to be done on the move.
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And the key learning point is really not to try to unpack something on the move if it's distracting to the student because of safety issues.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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But the other point is that if something has happened and you know you're going to need to pull up and stop, just mention it and we call it tagging.
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I'm going to tag that, we're going to talk about it in a bit.
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And then when you stop, you remember the tag and you can put a reference on it.
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So, for example, we're going to tag the bus.
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A situation has occurred with a bus, it needs unpacking at the side of the road.
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We're going to tag the situation with the bus.
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And then when you stop and unpack it, they can immediately scroll their mind back to exactly that situation involving the bus.
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Okay, and tagging is writing a prompt word down, isn't it?
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It might be, yeah.
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If you can trust your memory not to forget it, that's fine.
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But it's a really good idea, especially in an exam when the pressure's on, to just write maybe just the word bus to help you remember to unpack the tag.
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So I suppose the skill, just to summarise then on responding, the skill is knowing when to do something on the move because it's capable of being done on the move safely, or when it's necessary to stop, isn't it?
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Exactly that.
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But also, you know, whether it's going to be on the move or or stopping, make sure you acknowledge it.
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If, like I said at the beginning, if it's a student's question, even if it's like they're muttering something to themselves, make sure you acknowledge it and then come back to it and unpack it with them.
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Okay, so we're moving on to our second point now, which is dealing with if your unpacking needs to reinforce learning, doesn't it?
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Yeah, and we need to reinforce learning, whether it's good or bad.
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So good learning has taken place, we need to reinforce that.
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And it's really important to be positive, try and link it back to the goals, which we'll come on to in a minute.
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But when something good has happened, if you just ignore it, that isn't going to consolidate that in the student's mind, okay, in your pupil's mind.
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So if they've been struggling with meeting traffic, perhaps, for example, and decision making, and then they've had a situation where they've looked well ahead, planned ahead, and they've made a fantastic decision to pull up in exactly the right place to let the car come through.
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If you don't acknowledge that, then you've lost that learning.
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Because if you say nothing, they're not going to really know that what they did there was good.
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So you need to let them know it was really good, put it in a bottle, and use that every time when you're meeting traffic.
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So on the flip side of that, of course, not everything always goes to plan, as we know.
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So when something not so positive has happened, it's still equally as important that you unpack it.
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You can't just ignore it because it's gone wrong.
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But what is important is you try not to be very negative about it with your students.
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So try not to use negative language, such as, oh, you did that wrong, or you didn't do that very well, did you?
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I mean, that's just gonna knock them completely.
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So use it as an opportunity for development.
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Okay, so try and be positive, but you do have to be honest.
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We're gonna come back to that a bit later on.
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And I think it's very important, isn't it, just to summarise on that, that whether it's positive or negative feedback, it's always got to be positively framed as a learning opportunity, hasn't it?
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Exactly, because if nothing bad's ever gonna happen, you know, their learning isn't gonna accelerate through that.
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It's you know, bad things happen and we learn from.
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That's the important thing.
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So that brings us on to the third point that we're going to just touch on, which is checking out that the student understands the information that you you're discussing with them, isn't it?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I've sat in many, many lessons with PDIs and even tests with PDIs, where the PDIs had a lovely conversation with the student, and the student is nodding and duly saying yes where they feel they should, and they have no idea what the instructor's talking about.
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So it's really important that it's a it's a two-way conversation and that the student really does get what you're trying to tell them.
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Because if they don't understand, it's a complete waste of time for both of you.
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And a good way of checking out if they really have got to grips with something, a concept or a new skill, is actually ask them to explain it back to you.
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Yeah.
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Obviously, you know, not leaving them sort of struggling with that, but actually coaching them and prompting them and making checking out their understanding of certain aspects.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And again, if you're doing this sort of conversation on the move, be very aware of anything that's happening ahead of you because getting them to talk to you about a situation or learning on the move is difficult if there's anything else for them to concentrate on.
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So again, we're coming back to that first point we covered about that judgment about when to stop and pull over and unpack something vis-a-vis more simple issues that can be dealt with on the move.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And often it it it it's obvious that a student might understand something simple, like you know, a mirror check being missed.
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Uh so those kind of things can be done on the move, can't they?
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Yeah, and again, you know, just listen to how your student is responding.
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Because if they're just grunting at you, it might well be that they're they haven't taken on board what you're saying.
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Maybe because there's too much else going on for them, or maybe they just don't understand.
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So, in that situation, you're gonna have to dig in a little deeper.
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And if you're trying to do something like that on the move, then you might have to change plans and think, okay, we're gonna have to just take this a little more slowly.
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So we'll need to pull up for this one.
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Okay, so moving on then to point four, which is we've got down, is making sure that your unpacking is relevant to your learning goals.
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What's that all about?
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So, obviously, at the beginning of your lesson, you're gonna set out your aims or your goals for the lesson.
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And it's really important throughout the lesson that when a learning outcome is achieved, so the student has learnt something, you can link it back to the original goals that you set.
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And it might not even be that they've actually achieved learning, it might be that they've made a decision, a good one or a bad one, but it still links back to the subject that you were talking about at the beginning.
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So perhaps you might have been talking about, for example, planning and anticipation, and they've done something really good because they have planned well ahead.
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So you'd link that back to the learning goals as a positive.
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But again, if they've if they haven't planned well ahead and it's all gone a bit wrong because of that, again, you can just go back to your learning goals and talk about you know what you were setting out to achieve at the beginning of the lesson to reiterate and highlight the fact that you need to keep working on these skills.
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Okay.
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So we also talked about the importance of timing before, but it's also in unpacking with somebody, it's really important for clarity, isn't it?
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Yeah.
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So if we just touch on that a little bit as our fifth point.
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As our fifth point, yeah.
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So when you're unpacking, it's very easy, and I've seen it again, I've seen it a lot for if something's gone wrong, for there's two things that will happen.
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Either the PDI will be very negative with the student, like you did that wrong, or they will try and skirt around the issue because they don't want to give that negative feedback to the student.
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Or indeed, sometimes they don't understand what's happened themselves.
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Yeah, well, that's a whole different issue, isn't it?
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But yes, so it's important that your feedback is honest.
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So when something has gone not so well, try and use it, like we just touched on earlier, as sort of honest feedback, but with a positive spin on it, so that we can use it as an opportunity to learn and develop.
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Yeah, and if there is a lack of clarity about what's happened, is pull over and get that clarity through unpacking it in a structured way with the student.
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So we touched on in safety critical events, didn't we, in the article and uh the ADI 1 review, where safety critical events were unpacked in a structured way using the 4W1H approach.
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So is that relevant for unpacking generally?
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Yep, so of course, you know, the the what, why, where, when, and how is a good way to unpack any situation, but particularly when it's a safety critical event or a potential safety critical, because you really do need to dig into those situations.
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But you know, it is always it's got to be honest, it's got to be balanced, and you've got to cover all the points.
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So when you're getting into the the what, when, why, how, whatever, that's really a pull up at the side of the road situation.
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You can't really do that on the move so well because it's a bit more in-depth, isn't it?
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Yeah.
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So just to reflect then on the six points we've covered, responding in a timely way to an event or an issue that's occurred is important.
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Ensuring is it's not done in a distracting way.
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So you need to make decisions about do I unpack this on the move or pull up and stop.
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Ensuring that it reinforces learning, that it's done in a positive way, and that tackles both something that's gone wrong as well as something that's gone right.
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So get that balance, that you check out with the student that they've understood what you've been talking about and where you've been talking about the event, and that you know the outcome of that is understood.
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That it's the discussion is relevant where possible to your learning goals, or it highlights any new learning, and that it's really clear in terms of an unpack, honest and balanced, and that where it overlaps with the safety critical event, that you obviously need to do a more structured unpack of that, dealing with the emotional response to the event, and then the where, what, why, and how model.
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Yeah, and I would say, I mean, this is this is great theory for all of this, but there's nothing that replaces your in-car training for these sort of events.
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So, any any final comments about unpacking from from your experience, Sarah?
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No, but if you don't, if you don't get it right, it can be a really, you know, it can be really detrimental to the whole lesson.
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It's a really, really important point of of an important skill to get to grips with to be a good instructor.
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So it's worthwhile spending some time looking at the alternative models for unpacking things and actually making sure that when you unpack, get some feedback on how your unpacking is gone.
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And classically, it's really important that if you get feedback from your student that they don't understand, or their body language is telling you they don't understand what you're saying to them, is actually seek feedback from the student and listen to that because it may well be it's your teaching style or the you know their learning style is is uh out of kilter.
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Uh so that they may need to have the issue or the the fault or what you're discussing with them reframed in a different way, using a different method.
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It could be using uh diagrams or magnetic boards as opposed to just a discussion, couldn't it?
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Absolutely, yeah.
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Just you know, think outside the box, use all of the tools in your toolbox.
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Don't be don't be afraid to try something new.
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If they're not understanding, it's on you.
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You've got to change the way you're delivering.
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So we hope that's been of use to you.
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As always, please feel free to contact us.
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We hope you enjoyed.
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Thank you.