Gloria Dall’Alba

We read the Gloria Dall’Alba in class and worked together as a group to discuss its relevance to our individual practice.

This text is interesting as it values feedback as an essential part of the learning outcomes and puts it as the centre of the teacher and student relationship. It also challenges the hierarchy between teacher/student to place both parties in the same seat of learners and collaborators in this journey.

The idea is to put the spotlight on the students’ voices and deconstruct the single direction of education from the teacher’s mouth to the student’s ears, is something I am convinced of and try to practice with my students to allow more time for group discussion and group feedback in the class time.

Besides agreeing with the core idea of the text and putting the feedback sessions at the centre of the student learning experience, I found this text extremely difficult to read and academic which contradicts the message of the writer who would like to be the action of teaching more inclusive and real.

The constant quoting of Heidegger’s theory seems a little outdated as well as redundant, we have the impression that Dell’Alba is not building on her personal experiences as a tutor as valid examples of her theory but needs to reference Heidegger to convince her peers and other academics.

I was also discussing the example chosen as they all seem to support the writer’s opinion and theory without doubt or concerns from the participant of the study.

Overall this article was not eye-opening as it conveys something we all today value and put emphasise, which is students’ feedback but also on seeing education non longer as a two-way direction.

We all felt that the vocabulary was very wordy to explain this theory and contradicted the main message of inclusiveness, levelling with the students and breaking from the very academic tradition.