Dirt - or “directed improvement and reflection time”, to use the feedback method’s full name - is a controversial topic. This week, two teachers have popped their head above the proverbial parapet in order to nail their colours to the mast. Here, we present both sides of the debate so you can make up your own mind.
FOR
‘Dirt delivers powerful and lasting impacts’
Dirt done badly is like anything else done badly: at best a waste of everyone’s time and at worst a betrayal of it. But done right, it has the capacity to be transformative.
Yes, dirt tasks are visible and explicit, but this is a good thing. Far from viewing this as the method’s Achilles heel, I would argue that its obviousness is actually one of its key strengths. For a start, it forces the pupil not only to look at the feedback given but also, most importantly, to demonstrably act upon it.
Ask yourself how many collective hours you’ve spent marking work, giving detailed and diagnostic feedback, only for the pupil to barely give it a casual glance. What was the tangible difference made? Was there any?
Dirt tasks are a powerful antidote to this. Pupils must understand, reflect, evaluate and apply all in one task. And provided that the feedback given is specific and targeted to outcomes, by definition a pupil must have progressed in some way by completing their Dirt task.
If the tasks are embedded deeply and consistently into the teaching and learning process, they become consciously cyclical: each new extended task references the previous one, so that pupils now apply these improvements proactively to their work.
Used in this way, huge compound gains are made over time: Dirt tasks lead to considerably more sustained and deep-rooted outcomes, and the pupil’s learning progresses as a whole, not just in regards to the given piece of work.
I would far sooner work in a school that puts Dirt at the forefront of its policymaking. It genuinely creates powerful, lasting impacts for pupils.
Dan Thomas is an English teacher and head of faculty in North Leicestershire
AGAINST
‘Dirt gives the wrong message: feedback should improve the pupil, not the work’
The problem with Dirt is the same as with many other initiatives: it started being imposed on teachers with very little thought about what it was trying to achieve. It became yet another thing we had to demonstrate that we were doing.
Dirt usually involves improving a piece of work: the pupil completes something, they receive feedback on how to do it better and make the corrections.
This is fine if our objective is for them to be able to produce one really good piece of work, free from errors. But it may not help with other work. It confines feedback to one section of the lesson: “Improve this piece of work you did last week. Now put it to one side and we will move on.”
This is the wrong message. Feedback should seek to improve the pupil, not the work. It should influence the rest of the work they go on to do beyond the next lesson. Pupils should always be thinking about this feedback, not just at the beginning of a lesson because someone in the senior leadership team has decided it is a “non-negotiable”.
The reviewing process is too important to be confined to the rushed beginning of a lesson. Instead, it needs to be an ongoing part of the learning process. Pupils should be challenged to read back over and improve their work all the time. At the start of a lesson, in the middle or at the end. None of these occasions needs to be labelled “Dirt”. It is just teaching.
Mark Enser is head of geography and research lead at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex. His first book, Making Every Geography Lesson Count, is out now. He tweets @EnserMark
* This article originally appeared in the 25 January 2019 issue under the headline “Dishing the Dirt: should schools wash their hands of this feedback method?”
