Redding School District

Effective Feedback

Why is Feedback Important?

Feedback provides information that is necessary to the learning process. Even if the teacher doesn’t provide and feedback, students use some sort of information to take next steps in learning. Those steps can be anything from negative and counter-productive (“I flunked, as usual. I’ll throw this work in the trash on my way home”) to positive and very productive (“I wrote a great poem. Maybe I should try writing more poems”) and everything in between. At this point, hundreds of studies of feedback have been published, and reviews of these studies routinely conclude that feedback is the most important or nearly the most important variable affecting the amount and quality of student learning. In addition, teacher feedback is under a teacher’s control. Harnessing the power of effective feedback does not need to take additional time or resources beyond what teachers already have. Teachers can make it a routine part of their teaching repertoire. Research has shown that when students receive elaborated feedback that is positive and forward-looking, their learning improves. Research also shows that this is the kind of feedback most students prefer. The video to the left gives and overview of Hattie and Timperley’s analysis of research on feedback and their recommendations for effective feedback. Here is the link to their formal paper on the subject, “The Power of Feedback”

So What is the Target?

The most effective learning happens when students are aiming for some understanding or skill, usually called a learning target, and are participating in a formative learning process based on three questions:

Where am I going?
Where am I now?
Where to next?

You might think that feedback just covers that second question-helping students understand the quality of their work and their learning at a point in time. In reality, effective feedback helps students with all three questions by helping students

See exactly what it is they are trying to learn.
Understand where they are currently.
See what their next step in learning should be and get the information they need to take that step.

Most of the feedback research focuses on what feedback should say and how it should be delivered. As with any writing, you have choices about the words you use for student feedback. Sometimes, you don’t use words at all but rather demonstrate a skill (e.g., showing a band student how to hold her clarinet). Sometimes you use words and demonstrations together.

To help teachers learn about student thinking by giving feedback on student work.

Give feedback on assignments where students had to use thinking processes, not just recall information.
Try to infer the understandings (even if they are partial or mistaken) and thought processes students must have used in order to produce the work they did.
Relate these understandings about student thinking to the learning goals they are trying to achieve, and identify the next change in thinking that needs to happen for them to get there.
Make this next change in thinking the centerpiece of your feedback comments or next instructional moves for that student.

Two Important Concepts

For complex work, build opportunities for revision based on feedback, and ask students to explain what they did and why. The test of whether students learned from feedback on complex work is whether their revised work shows more understanding than before. Tell students that this is their goal.
For basic skills, revision in the sense of correcting errors only contributes to learning if students identify the errors and then fix them. The test of whether students learned from feedback on basic skills drill and practice is whether their work on new problems exemplifying the same learning target shows more understanding than before.

Choices and Recommendations About the Feedback Message and Its Delivery

To help students learn from feedback on their work.

Communicate the learning goal(s) and success criteria before students begin work, and revisit them often during the work.
Make sure the feedback you give refers to these learning goals and criteria.
Provide opportunities for students to process feedback comments they receive by; 1. Giving students opportunities to ask questions about the feedback. 2. Giving students opportunities to explain to you or a peer what their feedback means and what they will do about it.
Give students an opportunity to use the feedback to improve (see the section “The Long View”)