Six Characteristics of Effective Feedback

(Originally titled “How Am I Doing?”)]

From the Marshall Memo #452

In this Educational Leadership article, Pearson vice president Jan Chappuis says giving feedback to students can be ineffective if teachers don’t look carefully at students’ work and listen to what they are saying. She lists six characteristics of effective feedback:

• It directs students to the intended learning. For example, a teacher who tells students to take out their math books, turn to page 152, read the instructions, send the table leader for materials, and start the decimal hunt has given directions on activities but hasn’t told students the learning target (learning to read decimals and put decimal numbers in order). Students are likely to see their job as completing the work rather than learning something important, and they’re less likely to be ready for learning-focused feedback.

• It points out what the student is doing well and offers specific information to guide improvement. Good feedback affirms students’ success and intervenes with specific suggestions if they are faltering. For example, a teacher might say, “The drawing you made didn’t seem to help solve the problem. Try using the tree diagram we learned about yesterday.” 

• It occurs during the learning, while there’s still time to act on it. Teachers need to intervene as soon as possible to correct errors and get students practicing effective methods.

• It is given only when students have at least some understanding. If there is nothing to compliment in a student’s work, it’s a sign that reteaching is needed, not feedback. “If students don’t understand the task but try anyway, and then receive feedback they don’t understand, they can come to believe they are incapable of succeeding,” says Chappuis. 

• It doesn’t do the thinking for students. “When teachers provide students with more guidance than they need, feedback doesn’t deepen the learning because students don’t need to think,” says Chappuis. With a paper containing numerous spelling and grammatical errors, a teacher might indicate the type of error in each line by writing in the margin C for capitalization, U for usage, P for punctuation, and S for spelling – or put a dot in the margin for each error. In both cases, the student needs to do most of the work.

• It limits corrective information to what the student can act on. Overloading students with feedback is counterproductive, says Chappuis, often leading students to shut down. Focus on the items that are key to current instruction. 

“How Am I Doing?” by Jan Chappuis in Educational Leadership, September 2012 (Vol. 70, #1, p. 36-40), www.ascd.org; Chappuis can be reached at Jan.Chappuis@Pearson.com.