What can we learn from asking students directly about their experiences of French lessons?
Laura Molway discusses her research on students’ attitudes and experiences of learning French in secondary schools. She explores the value of teachers seeking direct feedback from their students and how this can help develop policy and practice. To develop their practice, languages teachers need detailed feedback about the quality of their classroom teaching. Students have extensive, first-hand experience of their languages lessons and they can offer direct feedback to their teachers that is cheap and easy to collect. In conversation with Hamish Chalmers, Laura Molway from the University of Oxford’s Department of Education describes how she developed, tested and implemented a student survey tool, which languages teachers can use to help evaluate their own teaching. She describes the results of using the survey with 1,370 Year 8 pupils learning French in the South of England, and an accompanying survey of their teachers. She describes the implications of her research for teachers and modern language departments for reflecting on their policies and practice. The Deanery Digest (a plain language summary of this research) can be viewed here: https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/deanery-digest/what-can-we-learn-from-asking-students-directly-about-their-experiences-of-french-lessons/. The full published journal article can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102440. The tool can be downloaded from the IRIS database here: https://www.iris-database.org/details/hiUZN-cD4y3. Learn more about the Oxford Education Deanery here: https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/about-us/oxford-education-deanery/.