Supporting lecturers to monitor their students’ learning and develop their practice through engaging with mathematics support centre feedback

This paper analyses the engagement of lecturers of mathematics or mathematics-related subjects, with the feedback from their students’ visits to a university mathematics support centre, as interpreted by the attending support tutor(s). This engagement is analysed in two ways. Firstly, via 43 lecturer responses to two end-of-semester electronic surveys conducted one year apart and secondly via analysis of reflective journals kept by lecturers the following year. This latter study, conducted with nine lecturers, involved them writing down their thoughts immediately upon reading the weekly email of mathematics support centre feedback relating to their module. We analyse these reflections and categorise them into three themes namely, reflection for action, knowledge of content and students, and student engagement. The results suggest that the feedback received from the centre influenced lecturers’ teaching practice in terms of content delivery and on placing further emphasis and time on important concepts. This study offers a route to leveraging the feedback collected at a mathematics support centre on student learning in order to close the feedback loop.