Feedback in Practice

Today's blog provides some practices for implementing feedback in the classroom.  These ideas are summarized from the publication Feedback in Practice: Research for Teachers*. Your collaborative teams may find this document useful as you consider providing feedback for your students. 

"Feedback is information about how we are doing that guides our efforts to reach a goal."

--Grant Wiggins

“Feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor.”

--Dylan Wiliam

"Giving feedback is one of the most important things we do as educators. It is a powerful way to support learning and nurture meaningful relationships with our students."

--Dickson and Housiaux

Feedback is a key part of the teaching and learning process and is a critical factor for standards-based learning. The publication linked above outlines some big ideas for implementing feedback in order to maximize the impact. The authors also provide examples of how to improve feedback to students.

Big Ideas for Providing Effective Feedback

#1 Students must engage with feedback in order to learn from it.
Feedback leads to learning only through student engagement and reflection. 

#2 Feedback depends on a student's identity and their relationship to their teacher. 
Non-cognitive factors like belonging, stereotype threat, and a growth mindset shape how feedback is received.

#3 Quality feedback focuses on specific instructional goals. 
Focused feedback on clearly articulated objectives supports learning.

#4 Feedback and grading are different.
Evaluative grades and formative feedback serve different purposes.

Improving Feedback

OK: “B+. You still need to master exponent rules.” (Evaluation)

Better: "You are confusing the two main exponent rules—when multiplying two bases you need to add the exponent, not multiply. Practice a few of these types of problems for the next homework assignment."

OK: “Make sure your main idea paragraph relates to your topic.” (Advice)

Better: "Your first sentence is about therapy dogs. But the rest of your paragraph talks about what dogs eat and where dogs sleep. Look at the examples of effective writing on our handout and then rewrite your paragraph."

OK: “Wow! Your lab report is really nicely done.” (Praise)

Better: You explained your results with good scientific vocabulary, your methods section is appropriately detailed, and your data presentation is as polished as the sample lab reports.

* Feedback in Practice: Research for Teachers. Bowman Dickson and Andy Housiaux, Tang Institute at Andover, August 2021.