The Importance of Feedback in the Learning Process

As we approach the latter part of Term 1, it is usually the case that students are faced with a significant number of assessment tasks and assessment results that at times affect them at the emotional level.

For the purpose of learning, assessment tasks are ways in which teachers gather information about the progress students have made in the learning expected of them. Teachers use the information gathered, interpret it and then offer feedback to students about how they are going and what to do next in their learning journey.

I’d like to share an extract from John Hattie’s work on the topic of feedback. Hattie is one of the world’s best known and most respected researcher and educator. Hattie suggests that feedback is one of the most effective ways of helping students improve their learning.

I would suggest that at home parents can use the processes and questions in this extract to assist their children in their process of improvement.

The Three Feedback Questions (Hattie & Timperley 2007)

Where am I going? Knowing the end Goal!

The first question relates to goals or Where am I going? While there is much research about the power of goals in the management and psychological literature, it is not as common in the education literature. When students understand their goals and what success at those goals look like, then the feedback is more powerful. Without them feedback is often confusing, disorienting, and interpreted as something about the student not their tasks or work. Most school age students’ goals are more sport or social than academic and most academic goals relate more to completion of work, being on time, and trying harder than on the quality of the academic outcomes.

There are two major elements of goals – these are challenge and commitment. Challenging goals relate to feedback in two major ways. First, they inform individuals “as to what type or level of performance is to be attained so that they can direct and evaluate their actions and efforts accordingly. Feedback allows them to set reasonable goals and to track their performance in relation to their goals so that adjustments in effort, direction, and even strategy can be made as needed” (Locke & Latham, 1990, p. 23). These levels of attainment can be termed success criteria. These are goals without clarity as to when and how the student (and teacher) would know they were successful and are often too vague to serve the purpose of enhancing learning. Second, feedback allows students (and/or their teachers) to set further appropriately challenging goals as the previous ones are attained, thus establishing the conditions for ongoing learning. By having clear goals, students are more likely to attend to reducing the gap instead of overstating their current status, or claiming various attributions that reduce effort and engagement. Goal commitment, which refers to one’s attachment or determination to reach a goal, has a direct and often secondary impact on goal performance.

How am I going?

The second question is more related to progress feedback (How Am I Going?). This entails feedback (about past, present or how to progress) relative to the starting or finishing point and is often expressed in relation to some expected standard, to prior performance, and/or to success or failure on a specific part of the task. Feedback information about progress, about personal best performance, and comparative effects to other students can be most salient to this second question.

Where to next?

The third question is more consequential – Where to next? Such feedback can assist in choosing the next most appropriate challenges, more self-regulation over the learning process, greater fluency and automaticity, different strategies and processes to work on the tasks, deeper understanding, and more information about what is and what is not understood.

Together, with Professor Helen Timperley, these researchers have written a lot about the impact of feedback.  If you are interested, have a look at their article, The Power of Feedback, on the link below.

http://www.columbia.edu/~mvp19/ETF/Feedback.pdf

The work our teachers do with students in the classroom is guided by what we have learned from this research as well as other experts in education. In our daily teaching, we engage students in an understanding of the importance of feedback in the process of learning. This is directly related to how well-prepared students are to demonstrate their learning in assessment situations. We’ll discuss the issue of assessment readiness in a later entry.

Mr Jaime Rodriguez, Deputy Head of School & Head of Secondary