Provide Feedback

• Feedback is information

• Praise and feedback should be kept separate

• Learn to receive feedback

• Plan for peer feedback

• Add more formative feedback

In the book Visible Learning: Feedback (2012), author John Hattie says feedback is information designed to close a gap. The gap is the space between where the learner is (the present state) and where the learner is meant to be (the future state).

Marks/grades provide feedback but there are many other feedback methods.

There are proven strategies for delivering feedback to make sure it is as Hattie says “just in time” and “just for me”.

There are even many things to consider in how you choose to say the feedback.

Praise should not be confused as the same thing as feedback. Where feedback is information and therefore is neutral in affect – it is neither positive nor negative – praise contains affect and is designed to be positive in nature. And where feedback contains plenty of useful information to aid learning, praise does not. In the book Visible Learning: Feedback (2012), author John Hattie notes that there is increasing evidence for a dilution effect of praise on feedback. Therefore, he suggests keeping feedback and praise about the learning separate.

Comparing statements of praise to statements of feedback.

Learning to receive feedback is as important or more important than learning how to give it. Even when feedback is given well, it is often poorly received and rarely used. Changing one’s mindset towards feedback by seeing that feedback thrives on error is a key starting point. In the book Visible Learning: Feedback (2012), author John Hattie states that error is the difference between what we know and can do and what we aim to know and do.

When receiving feedback it is good to self-reflect on and organize that feedback into a 2x2 matrix using the headings expected and unexpected, on target and off target.

It is difficult to give feedback to every student in the detail necessary all the time. Employing peer feedback is a way to help alleviate this problem. While many teachers may worry about the effectiveness and overall messiness of students giving feedback to each other, it is a powerful way to improve learning to give and receive feedback as well as become better at self-assessment (Hattie, 2012). To help improve the process Hattie (2012) recommends prompts, which, for example, are things like question stems and sentence openers that help as a scaffolding tool in improving peer assessment.

Here is a Feedback Matrix built on earlier work by Hattie and Timperley (2007) that includes numerous prompts based on their four levels of feedback and three stages of learning.

If feedback is information designed to close a gap between where the learner is at and where the learner wants to be then that feedback should be formative. It should happen while the learner is practicing and has time to use the feedback to help them course correct. Guide to formative feedback.