What makes conducting effective ‘Feedback’ difficult?
What is feedback? John Hattie’s meta-study, “Visible Learning,” conducted in 2009, meticulously compiled various factors believed to impact student achievement. Not surprisingly, feedback emerged as a pivotal element, claiming the top spot among 138 identified factors. But what exactly do we mean by feedback? Why give feedback? Who should engage in it? How can it be done? And when should it be implemented? Why is it invariably performed poorly by teachers or skipped alltogether? These questions invite reflection and answers.
Feedback, by its nature, offers insight into one’s performance, aiding in skill refinement and learning enhancement.
The essence of feedback lies in its ability to provide constructive insights into performance, enabling learners to identify areas for improvement and build upon strengths. In a classroom setting, feedback may encompass various forms, including ticks on a learner’s homework, comments highlighting strengths and weaknesses, grades, or simply eliciting correct answers.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of feedback hinges on its relevance, specificity, and timeliness. By fostering a culture of effective and appropriate feedback, educators empower learners to take ownership of their learning journey.
Why give feedback?
There are three primary purposes:
- To inform learners of their performance: Feedback serves as a means for learners to gauge their understanding and mastery of a subject or task. It offers clarity on whether they have grasped concepts correctly or if there’s room for improvement.
- To guide teaching: Feedback provides invaluable insights for teachers, helping them identify students who may need additional support or guidance. By understanding individual learning needs, teachers can tailor their approach to address specific challenges and enhance overall classroom learning.
- To assess class progress: Feedback offers a snapshot of the class’s collective understanding and progress. It enables teachers to discern common areas of strength or weakness, informing decisions on whether to revisit certain topics or adjust teaching strategies to better meet the needs of the group.
The aim of feedback is not to do an activity that learners completed in pairs or groups again in open class with the teacher. This may be an obvious comment but there are many teachers who get into a habit of getting learners to do a task in pairs (such as a gap fill) and then doing the activity again in open class nominating learners to verbalise their answers. Sometimes the feedback takes longer than the initial task as the questions are distributed around the class one by one.
Teacher: What’s number 1 Ali?
Ali: At
Teacher: Yes, correct. What’s number 2 Ayse?
In language classes, feedback takes various forms and serves multiple purposes:
- Concrete praise: Acknowledging specific achievements, such as using new vocabulary effectively, reinforces positive behavior and encourages further growth.
- Corrective feedback: Addressing errors directly, accompanied by guidance on how to improve, ensures learners understand where they’ve gone wrong and how to correct their mistakes.
- Monitoring reading tasks: Providing targeted feedback on incorrect responses during reading activities helps students identify and rectify mistakes independently.
- Peer feedback: Encouraging students to discuss answers and reasoning with peers fosters collaboration and supports deeper understanding through shared insights and explanations.
- Use of answer keys: Employing answer keys for group tasks ensures accuracy and self-assessment while allowing teachers to gauge individual and group progress.
- Writing feedback: Offering personalized feedback on homework assignments, focusing on content and language aspects, guides students in refining their writing skills and prioritizing areas for improvement.
Who can / should give feedback? How?
There are three sources of ‘human’ feedback in the classroom. There are also other sources such as internet resources such as Google, You Tube, AI and dictionaries. In terms of who can provide feedback we have:
1 Self:
2 Peers
3 Teacher
There are advantages and disadvantages to all three.
How long will feedback take? This depends on: do they need to have a final correct version, do I need to know how many of them are getting it right, do they need to know how come that answer is right, do I need something to wake them up or calm them down?
Alternative examples of feedback
Alternative methods of giving feedback in interactive activities, where learners generate their own language, pose unique challenges. While tasks with single answers like gap fills or matching exercises lend themselves to straightforward feedback methods such as nomination or answer keys, interactive tasks require more nuanced approaches.
Peer correction and feedback become crucial in such scenarios, fostering collaboration and mutual support among learners. Encouraging learners to reflect on their own learning experiences adds depth to the feedback process, often revealing unexpected insights and areas of growth. One method is using the talking circle in which learners share answers, questions, reflections or stories in a rotating wheel. Here is an example but done in two moving lines:
One inventive feedback approach is the “board rush” method, particularly effective for activities with one-word answers or questions. In this competitive format, answers or questions are jumbled on the board, and learners, divided into teams, race to identify and circle the correct response upon seeing a related picture or prompt. This dynamic activity not only energizes the classroom but also reinforces learning outcomes through active engagement and friendly competition.
See an example of a board rush here:
For those interested in honing facilitation skills and exploring performative methodologies, a facilitation skills master class workshop is offered annually. These workshops, held in July, delve into facilitation techniques and participatory methodologies, with a special focus on drama-based activities. Participants have the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning experiences and gain insights from experienced facilitators and peers.
To get a glimpse of the workshop’s content and participant experiences, video clips from previous sessions are available for viewing.
Whether you’re a seasoned educator or new to facilitation, these workshops provide valuable tools and strategies for creating engaging and effective learning environments. Mark your calendars and join us for an enriching learning experience this summer. Register here
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