The Positive Possibilities of Feedback
by Dr. Brady Quirk, Coordinator, SPS Professional Learning

   As a new year begins, we tend to be focused on the future by making resolutions and concentrating on the possibilities that lie ahead.  The possibilities of taking our students to that next level is no doubt a resolution for many of us, and focusing on feedback can be an integral part of that.  In John Hattie’s Visible Learning meta-analysis, feedback had an effect size of .73, making it one of the most powerful variables available to teachers. What feedback looks like, however, and how it is experienced by the student tends to vary tremendously.
   According to Hattie, when teachers are surveyed about what they consider quality feedback, it revolves around the “ten C’s” of comments, clarification, criticism, confirmation, content development, constructive reflection, correction, cons & pros, commentary, and criterion relative to a standard. When students are interviewed about their perception of teacher feedback, the main theme that consistently emerges is: they want to know how to improve their work so that they can do better next time. Keeping an awareness of what students need in teacher-provided feedback and perhaps more importantly, how it is perceived by the student, is crucial to moving them forward.

• Keeping Feedback Future-Focused: While teachers’ input revolving around the ten C’s may seem like it meets this need, the feedback is almost always focused on a past product or piece of data.  Students tend to be future-focused, looking toward the next assignment or task rather than on work already left behind.  This is not to say they don’t want mistakes to be corrected, but rather that the key may be in the delivery of feedback while also looking toward future opportunities for mastery. The positive possibilities of what success may look like on subsequent opportunities will inspire effort more than just a critique of the past assignment, which they have mentally left behind.
• Positive to Negative Ratio: While students want to know where to go next, research shows that teachers tend to achieve this goal through what students perceive as negative feedback. The result is students often ignore the extensive feedback that teachers spend a lot time and effort to provide. Human nature is to lend more weight to negative events (or feedback) than positive events.  In regard to teacher input on student work, Hattie found that students mentally/emotionally equate one negative comment to four or five positive comments.  The suggestion is not to provide a constant stream of unfounded praise, but rather to maintain an awareness of the ratio of positive to negative comments.  Keeping the ratio of positive to negative input as equal as possible and focusing on the student’s next opportunity to perform seems to produce the greatest growth in student work.
• Too Much Praise: Keeping the positive to negative ratio somewhat equal is important, but over-praising can also have a negative effect. While classroom praise has positive interpersonal and classroom management results, there is no research to show that it considerably improves student achievement.  Research on growth mindset has shown that frequently praising students for being intelligent or clever on simple tasks has the side-consequence of causing ability to be perceived by the student as a limited resource.   When more complex tasks are presented, students are more likely to perceive themselves as “not smart enough”.  Keeping feedback tied to the learner objective and not emphasizing natural ability has shown the best results.
• The Video Game Comparison: Feedback attempts to move students from their current level of knowledge/skill to a desired objective.  Oddly enough, video games do a great job at this by clearly showing the player what success will look like. Video games are programmed to monitor player performance and pick up next time where the player left off.  The game then provides a new challenge that is just out of reach of the current state, combined with extensive “feedback” in order to get the player to the next level. What we don’t want is for the classroom to look the video game without the appropriate feedback.  Students must know what success (i.e. the next level ) will look like for them to move forward, so clear goals and success criteria are crucial.

Being mindful of HOW we provide feedback to students is just as important as the feedback itself.  By maintaining a balance between the student work in question with the next opportunity, and by being intentional to balance the positive with the negative, feedback can be framed in such a way that students take it, use it and really show you what they can do.

Hattie, J. (2014). Visible learning and the science of how we learn. New York, NY: Routledge