Organising feedback is an important part of any teacher’s role in supporting students in the learning process. But when is which feedback appropriate?
When students are at the beginning of their learning process, they still need a lot of support and guidance. As the learning process progresses, the level of required support decreases. If you hold their hand for too long, they will not develop sufficient independence. You should take this into account when organising feedback.
The key is to target the right amount of scaffolding appropriate to the stage of the learning process the student is at. See this LinkedIn-post for an excellent example.
In this blog we explain the steps you need to take to organise feedback so that it is appropriate to the moment in the learner’s learning process and guides them well towards independent mastery.
Feedback for novices and advanced learners
When designing feedback processes, it is important to consider the moment in the learning process. Novices need different support and pedagogy than students that are more proficient. Novices require feedback that focuses (positively) on some specific areas for improvement. This is a way of keeping motivation high.
Students who are more proficient need feedback that challenges them to use their abilities and further refine their skills.
An example of a feedback form that relies more on the learner’s expertise is what we call ‘detective work’. When you use this feedback form, you ask your pupil or student the question: ‘There are still five mistakes in your work, can you find them? In this way, the student has to put the puzzle together, look for the mistakes and be able to find and correct them on their own. For a more proficient student, this will prove challenging, and this challenge is important becausemore thinking is required. This is the only way a more proficient student can improve. But for a beginner this would probably lead to great frustration and demotivation. Because it relies too much on the student’s independence too early in the learning process.
Imagine going to your first salsa class and the teacher tells you that you did five steps wrong. Chances are you would ask for your money back!
This is a phenomenon that is also known as the expertise reversal effect.
Which form at which time?
Unfortunately, there is no scientific research (that we are aware of) that explains exactly which form of feedback is best at which point in the learning process. But by considering some guidelines we can make our own educated decisions.
1. What should my students focus on? (e.g. What are the criteria?)
2. How much independence do I expect at this point in the learning process?
3. What is the most appropriate form of feedback?
4. In what kind of action can I concretely observe that thinking has taken place?
1. Decide on a focus
A common pitfall in organising feedback is to give too much feedback at once, often focusing on all the criteria. In practice, this is often overwhelming for pupils or students and increases the likelihood of ‘feedback overload’, causing them to throw in the towel. The challenge, therefore, is for teachers to think about the focus of the feedback. If there are more aspects that require improvement, it is best to organise several rounds of focused feedback.
Focused feedback helps pupils or students to improve step by step without being overwhelmed. By focusing each round of feedback on specific aspects of an assignment, students can make targeted improvements and build their skills at a manageable pace.
Think about which subset of criteria is most important to focus on at which point in the learning process. For example, you might focus only on the structure of a text because that is most important in the early stages of the learning process, and on aspects of spelling and grammar later.
2. Decide on level of independence
Usually, we aim through our teaching to help our students or learners to achieve a (main) goal: a skill that students should be able to perform independently.
The further we move towards reaching that goal, the more we should and can expect from a learner. An import consideration is therefore: how can we determine what level of thinking is required at what point in the learning process? Do we determine what a pupil or student should be able to do, or do we let this depend on what we find in our pupils or students?
These are two different approaches that have implications for how we might design our teaching and feedback processes.
Approach 1: If you let it depend on what level of independent mastery you find in the students, this requires a lot of flexibility from the teacher. This would mean responding to what you see, with the pupil or student more in control of the pace at which the material is taught or worked through. The advantage of this approach is that you use the learner’s level as a starting point, which means that the feedback is more likely to match the closest developmental zone.
Approach 2: Another approach is for the teacher to have a clear idea of what level of independence they expect at what point in the learning process. This will not always be the actual level of the learner or student. In this approach, the teacher determines the amount of time it should (reasonably) take to reach a certain level of independent mastery (e.g. five weeks).
This allows the teacher to be very specific about the forms of feedback used. The teacher then determines before the series of lessons when a pupil or student should be at a certain level.
Which approach is better?
Which of these two approaches you choose will depend on your particular teaching context. One is not necessarily better than the other; each has advantages and disadvantages. If you have room for flexibility in scheduling, the first approach may work best for you. If you work in a more fixed structure, with a tighter timetable, the second approach will suit you better.
3. Pick an appropriate feedback type
Feedback at the start of the learning process
At the beginning of the learning process we can assume that students have very little independence. Often the material being introduced is new to them. We cannot expect novices to be able to see the whole picture, assess themselves well or know exactly how to do a particular task correctly. More teacher-directed forms of feedback are therefore most appropriate at this stage.
Novices therefore need to:
Develop a sense for quality: by comparing examples and demonstrating the task aloud so that students get an idea of what quality means. but it is at least a strategy that can make feedback forms more successful.
Receive constructive, guiding and corrective feedback: The beginning of the learning process is unpredictable and them throwing in the towel is a reasonable risk . Therefore, it is important at this stage to focus feedback on what is already going well and to explicitly mention positive aspects. This will keep the learner’s motivation high. It is important that the feedback contains concrete instructions or corrections. In this way, mistakes can be corrected, steps can be taken in the right direction and the new learning is not taught incorrectly.
The starting point here is to state explicitly what is going well (content) and/or how he/she has made a good effort. Then focus increasing the performance. Suppose a student has given the following answer: 2a + 5a = 7a2. The feedback could be: “You have added the numbers correctly and now you need to use the correct rule for the letters. Because the letter remains the same when you add”.
Mid-learning feedback
As pupils or students progress through the learning process, other forms of feedback are needed to take them one step further towards independent mastery. As they develop more independence and a better understanding of what is expected of them, it is important to let the learner increasingly actively reflect on the feedback. This is to avoid learned helplessness in response to feedback.
Feedback can then be less directive and more in line with the learner’s developing independence, e.g:
- Hints/feedback legend: Instead of direct corrections, learners can be given – or not so – subtle hints to find solutions on their own. A feedback legend is a good example. Certain colours are associated with certain types of error. For example, a student might see a purple dot in the margin that represents a grammatical error. The student now has to find the error and correct it independently.
- Organise peer feedback: Pupils or students give each other feedback, e.g. based on some criteria. As the teacher, you need to ensure organisation and focus, but it is now up to them to actively give and receive feedback.
- Ask reflective questions: Questions that encourage students to reflect on their own work and process, e.g. “What do you think could be improved about this paragraph?”.
Advanced feedback
When pupils or students have reached the later stages of the learning process, it is necessary to further reduce the teacher’s support in the feedback forms. In this way, the learner’s degree of independence is further encouraged.
Feedback can now focus on further refinement and challenging the learner to think more deeply. This may include
Asking feedback questions: In this form, the student can ask the teacher 1 (or a few) more feedback questions. This ensures that the pupil or student now has to think very carefully about what or on what part he/she still wants feedback. Now the student applies focus.
Detective work: for example, the feedback legend used in the middle can now be replaced by just dots. Now the student is encouraged to work out for themselves what the error is.
Give the correct answer without telling them which answer goes where: In maths or other science subjects, you can offer students the correct answers to a series of questions without saying which answer goes where. This allows students to check themselves, but you can also require them to work out for themselves what is wrong if their answer is not among them.
Feedback to yourself: Perhaps the most difficult form of feedback is self-feedback. There is no longer a teacher involved and you have to look critically at your own work independently to come up with improvements.
4. Organise a landing place
One of the main reasons why feedback is often ineffective is that we don’t require feedback to be put into action.
It is essential to organise a landing space for each round of feedback. Without such a landing space, feedback often remains stuck in good intentions without triggering concrete action. Making explicit what the learner or student should do with the feedback strengthens the learning process and increases the likelihood that the learner will use the feedback effectively.
This means that a concrete task or improvement must be undertaken by the learner. The feedback can be applied to the same product (such as a letter or report) or to a new product but practising the same skill (such as explaining or arguing causality). A landing point could be rewriting a product, improving an assignment, or creating a new assignment that incorporates the feedback received previously.
To organise a landing point with multiple landing points, see this blog.
Conclusion
Organising effective feedback is crucial for student learning. By considering levels of independence and choosing the right form of feedback at different points in the learning process, teachers can provide targeted and effective support. Novices will benefit from direct, teacher-directed feedback, while more advanced pupils or students will benefit more from independent and challenging forms of feedback.
It is important to define the focus of each round of feedback and to organise a landing point so that the feedback is actually processed and leads to concrete improvements. This structured approach allows students to develop their skills step by step and grow towards greater independence.
In our book on formative action we have a full chapter on transformative feedback. You can download the chapter for free here: https://ecourse.formative-action.com/course/formative-action-free-course
Authors
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Valentina Devid is a history and philosophy teacher. She is an experience expert in the field of formative action and a much sought-after keynote speaker on the subject. She Is one of the founders of The Formative Action School.
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Flemming van de Graaf is a social studies and social sciences teacher. He aims to use his practical experience to inspire colleagues within his own school and at other schools to teach more effectively using formative action. Flemming is also a trainer for The Formative Action School.
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