Making Feedback to Students Effective

From the Marshall Memo #451

(Originally titled “Know Thy Impact”)

“Gathering and assessing feedback are really the only ways teachers can know the impact of their teaching,” says Australian educator John Hattie in this Educational Leadership article. The problem is that not all feedback is effective. Hattie offers these suggestions for making feedback work:

• Clarify the goal. “The aim of feedback is to reduce the gap between where students are and where they should be,” says Hattie. “With a clear goal in mind, students are more likely to actively seek and listen to feedback.” The teacher might provide scoring rubrics, a completed example, the steps toward a successful product, or progress charts.

• Make sure students understand the feedback. “When we monitor how much academic feedback students actually receive in a typical class, it’s a small amount indeed,” says Hattie. Teachers need to check with students to see if they’re getting it. This may involve asking them to interpret written comments and articulate next steps. 

• Seek feedback from students. Do they need help? Different strategies? Another explanation? Teachers who listen to students can adapt lessons, clarify work demands, and provide missing information, all of which helps students do better. 

• Tailor feedback to students. Novice students benefit most from task feedback, somewhat more proficient students from process feedback, and highly competent students thrive on feedback aimed at self-regulation or conceptual understanding.

• Task feedback – How well the student is doing on a particular task and how to improve.
• Process feedback – This might be suggested strategies to learn from errors, cues to seek information, or ways to relate different ideas. 
• Self-regulation feedback – This helps students monitor, direct, and regulate their own actions as they work toward the learning goal – and helps build a belief that effort, more than raw ability, is what produces successful learning. 

To move students from mastery of content to mastery of strategies to mastery of conceptual understanding, teachers need to give feedback that is at or just above their current level. 

• Use effective strategies. One tip is to scope out entering misconceptions and have students think them through. Another is providing students with formative assessment information, giving them specific information on strengths and weaknesses. A third is to start with effective instruction and learning experiences. “Teachers need to listen to the hum of students learning, welcoming quality student talk, structuring classroom discussions, inviting student questions, and openly discussing errors,” says Hattie. “If these reveal that student have misunderstood an important concept or failed to grasp the point of the lesson, sometimes the best approach is simply to reteach the material.” 

• Avoid ineffective feedback. Researchers have found that praise and peer feedback are problematic. “Students welcome praise,” says Hattie. “Indeed, we all do. The problem is that when a teacher combines praise with other feedback information, the student typically only hears the praise… The bottom line seems to be this: Give much praise, but do not mix it with other feedback because praise dilutes the power of that information.” As for peer feedback, Graham Nuthall monitored students’ peer interactions through the school day (using microphones) and found that most of the feedback students receive during the day is from other students – and much of it is incorrect. Peer feedback needs clear structure, such as a rubric and a set of guiding questions. 

• Create a climate of trust. Students must understand that errors and misunderstandings are part of learning and not be afraid of negative reactions from peers – or the teacher – if they make mistakes. 

“Know Thy Impact” by John Hattie in Educational Leadership, September 2012 (Vol. 70, #1, p. 18-23), www.ascd.org; Hattie can be reached at jhattie@unimelb.edu.au.