S1, EP 24: Effective Feedback

​How do we use feedback effectively in the teaching and learning cycle?

Feedback is a crucially important component of the teaching and learning cycle and a core component of evidence-based practice, according to the Centre for Education
Statistics and Evaluation (CESE, 2020). 

In episode 24, the Teacher Takeaway team discuss a range of key components and practices that support effective feedback, including:

• purpose of feedback (1:05)
• three major feedback questions (7:20)
• levels of feedback (13:07)
• examples of classroom practice (26:00)

Purpose of Feedback

Feedback gives clear direction for everyone and helps to demystify the learning process for learners. It helps both the students and teacher to understand what was done well and where learning needs to head next for each student as it relates to the learning intention and the outcomes in the syllabus.

The feedback process is about 'closing the gap' in learning. As teachers we need to know where students are and where they need to be, and feedback is part of the journey to achieving this in line with the intended learning intention and success criteria. Linking feedback back to the learning intention and success criteria ensures that your feedback is specific, and is linked to the focus of the learning session. 

Feedback is really imporant for teachers as well, as it supports our ability to be critically reflective on our own teaching processes. Eliciting feedback from students throughout the teaching and learning cycle supports teachers as they seek to understand their impact on student learning. 

Three Major Feedback Questions

There are three major questions that drive feedback and each question is supported by a number of practices and processes. 

Where Am I Going?

• Understanding the intent for learning and why it is important (learning intention)
• Understanding the criteria for success and the steps and processes required to achieve success (success criteria)
• Recognising what success looks like (exemplar)

How Am I Going?

• Reflecting on how learning is going at different points in the learning journing 
  
• Identifying examples of success in relation to the success criteria
• Identifying processes used to achieve success

Where To Next?

• Understanding how we can build upon and extend learning once we have achieved success
• Identifying new learning goals or next steps in the learning process

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Feedback needs to be short, timely and specific. We know that  this has the most impact on student learning, especially when it is directly linked to the success criteria.
​-Teacher Takeaway Podcast, 2021

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Levels of Feedback

Person-based feedback:
Self: involves praise as well as criticism, focused entirely on personality traits, does not include information on the learning process - "Good job."

Performance-based feedback:
Task: performance-based, provides learners with information about the product of learning. 

Process: performance-based, provides learners with information about the process they used to complete learning. 
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Self-regulation: performance-based, provides learners with information about the mechanisms they apply to regulate their learning. 

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Feedback that focuses on tasks, processes and student self-regulation is the most effective.
-CESE, 2020

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Examples of Classroom Practice

• Model effective feedback to students using the success criteria from the beginning, including using that language when examining exemplars.
  • model language 
  • model use of frameworks
  • scaffolded process that begins with teacher to student, then student self-reflection and finally student to student 
• Frameworks: Glow and grow/stars and wishes/ warm and cool feedback/ medal and a mission
  • feedback slips 
  • stamps with images of framework, e.g 2 lightbulbs (glow) and a plant (grow)
  • using frameworks to elicit feedback on teacher practice 
• Focus students per day 
• Proof and evidence finding - checklists

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​There's a right way and a wrong way to deliver the same message. Sometimes it's not what we say but how we say it.

It's how the message is delivered that is just as important as the message itself.
-Teacher Takeaway Podcast, 2021

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Further Reading:

Want to read further about effective feedback? Perhaps start with these papers and books.