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In Your Corner, Student Learning
Feedback That Fuels Learning
We know that feedback is a crucial part of the learning process. When students understand how their learning is progressing, where they can improve, and what steps they can take to move forward, their confidence grows and their effort and persistence strengthen. Without feedback students can struggle with mistakes, misconceptions, and confusion and lose track of their learning path.
We might assume that providing feedback is a simple process: We tell students what they did right, what they did wrong, and how to fix it. Yet, feedback delivered in this way is as likely to be dismissed by learners as it is to be heeded. How feedback is provided, when it’s provided, where it’s focused, and how it’s targeted matters as much as its content.
In fact, feedback provided poorly can have a negative impact on learning; leaving students frustrated, undermining their learning commitment, and even building resentment toward us and the feedback we offer. Given the potential of effective feedback to fuel the learning process, it’s worth getting right. Let’s examine five essential elements of effective feedback that will result in increased learning and confidence.
First, effective feedback results from an interactive process. We need to think of feedback as an exchange of information that leads to greater understanding for students—and us. The interaction should clarify what each party knows and needs to learn. For some students, this part of the process may require us to explicitly teach students what feedback is and how to receive and use it. A priority in the process is for students to ask questions and challenge information that isn’t clear or doesn’t help their understanding. We, too, need to be ready to listen to the perspectives, concerns, and questions students share and respond with support, encouragement, and coaching.
Second, quality feedback is objective and designed specifically for the student. For our feedback to be effective, it must be descriptive rather than judgmental. What we choose to share must be based on data and information we have without interpreting student motivation or guessing about a student’s thought process. The purpose of feedback is not to blame or praise. It is not to offer or withhold approval. Our goal is to share information the student can use to continue learning. We can help the student focus on areas of strength, build confidence, and extend areas where learning is already growing. What we share needs to be specific enough for the student to know what to do next yet stop short of doing the work for students.
Third, feedback is most impactful when it is timely. Sometimes, timely feedback means an immediate, on-the-spot response. In other situations, it might mean a discussion after the completion of a key section of a long-term project. Timely feedback might involve both teacher and student watching a video of the student practicing a skill and discussing what they observe before the student engages in another cycle of rehearsal. Regardless, to be timely, the information must be presented while it is fresh, the student is still engaged in the learning process, and they can use it in a meaningful way. Obviously, feedback presented after a unit is complete or after we have moved on to teaching a new concept has little learning value for students.
Fourth, useful feedback focuses on what students can control—or at least influence. We need to help students see how their efforts can move their learning forward. We also need to be careful to limit the scope of our feedback to avoid overwhelming the student. Further, our feedback must focus on the key strategies and approaches the student has used to this point and those needed to move to the next level of learning. Simply identifying what needs to be done can be of little use unless students know how to approach the work and understand what strategies are likely to lead to success.
Fifth, effective feedback must be connected to the learning goal the student is pursuing. We and the student need to be clear on the learning goal for which we are providing feedback. Without alignment between learning priorities and feedback, we risk confusion and wasted effort. Our feedback conference needs to include agreement on progress made so far, clarity about where learning is relative to the learning goal and an outline of the next two or three steps the student can take to move closer to the goal. However, for some students, we may need to present only one step at a time until the student builds the confidence and strategies to become more independent.
Including these five elements in our feedback practice will support students to build the confidence and skills necessary to accelerate and gain control of their own learning. Once students gain the confidence and competence that result from “owning their learning,” we can coach them to build the independence necessary to continue learning long after they leave us.
In Your Corner, Student Learning
Are We Giving Each Student a Real Shot at Success?
These are especially important times for learning. Too many students returned to school this fall behind where they might have been had the pandemic not disrupted their learning. We need to provide the support, coaching, and guidance they need to build the content and skills necessary to find success. Yet, there appear to be forces operating in our schools and classrooms that make catching up and finding success more difficult for some students than others.
Of course, we want to believe that every child who enters our schools and classrooms has equal opportunities to succeed, regardless of their family background and economic condition. We want it to be true that students with academic talent will be supported to develop and succeed without regard to social class. We do not want to think that our schools systematically undermine the success of any group of students, especially now.
Yet, a 2019 report by the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce calls these hopes and assumptions into serious question. The study, Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don’t Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be, utilizes data from a variety of federal databases to explore the role of race and family socio-economic status in predicting academic success.
We know that an academic performance gap exists between Black and Latino students and their white and Asian American counterparts. Closing this gap has been a focus of effort and attention for some time. We also know that not enough progress has been made to counter this long-standing and disappointing trend.
However, the Georgetown University report explores this phenomenon at significantly deeper levels. For example, the researchers discovered that students from low socio-economic status families with high test scores in kindergarten are less likely to eventually receive a college education than other students with low test scores, but from the top quartile of socio-economic status. Sadly, the difference in likelihood of a college education was not even close. The high performing, talented kindergarten student has only a 3-10 chance of receiving a college education and a good entry level job following graduation. Meanwhile, their lower scoring classmate from a more advantaged family is more than twice as likely, at a 7-10 likelihood of completing college and obtaining an attractive entry level position.
Further, the report documents that when talented minority students from lower socio-economic families struggle and their grades begin to fall, they are less likely to recover than their more advantaged counterparts. According to the report, when the test scores of more affluent students begin to fall, they have a 3-4 chance of later recovery. Meanwhile, less affluent students have only a 1-3 chance of recovery.
Obviously, this is a complex problem. We can provide general support, expanded academic interventions, improved counseling, and expanded career exploration, but successfully addressing the challenge will likely require more granular and pervasive efforts.
Consider that even talented students from lower socio-economic situated families often lack many of the experiences and much of the family-provided academic background knowledge available to their more advantaged classmates. Consequently, for these students new academic learning may require “back filling” experiences and information already possessed by more advantaged students before they can engage in new learning. If educators are not sensitive to these disparities, even bright, talented, but less informed and experienced students can doubt their abilities and compromise their learning efforts and aspirations. Consequently, their success is compromised.
Further, these students can experience similar disadvantaging consequences because of how homework and projects are structured and assigned. Students without extensive academic background knowledge and limited academic support at home can find that assignments and projects take two to four times longer to complete.
Beyond these specific practices that can reinforce and expand disparities, is the pervasive influence of educator expectations. It can be easy to expect more from students whose families have a history with and value formal learning. Consequently, they receive subtle messages of support and more frequent interventions when they struggle. The opposite can also be true. Over time, educator expectations can have a huge impact on performance, either up or down.
Each of our students deserve our support and a clear shot at success. It is up to us to create the conditions and provide the experiences necessary for success to be within their reach. There has never been a more important time to commit to making the future bright for all students, regardless of where they start and how far they must travel in their learning.
In Your Corner, Student Learning
In Your Corner, Leadership and Change Management
In Your Corner, Student Learning
In Your Corner, Student Learning
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Share your story and the tips you have for getting through this challenging time. It can remind a fellow school leader of something they forgot, or your example can make a difficult task much easier and allow them to get more done in less time. We may publish your comments.
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As much as we sometimes want to take control and tell students what they should do when they face a difficult challenge, it usually is best to position ourselves as coaches, reflectors, and supportive advocates.
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