Effective feedback drives improvements in teaching and learning. What happens to the feedback that you give students? Do you discuss it with them? Do they understand your feedback, and do they act on it? In our latest reader submission Andreas Katsanos – Berwick Campus Head of Commerce at Beaconhill College in Melbourne, Victoria – shares how he’s been focusing on improving his own practice in this area, by implementing a 3-stage feedback loop.
Is the routine still the same? You take your time marking and provide thorough feedback for the student to improve on, you return the task to the student and then one of 2 things happen – or both.
The student sees the grade, doesn’t read the feedback and reacts with jubilance or distress. Or the student looks at the feedback and then the grade and reacts with jubilance or distress. Either way, the feedback is forgotten or disregarded.
I’ve found that when presented with feedback in this manner, students most often never return to that original feedback, take it on board, or go back and make the changes that were suggested. By the time the next assessment comes around, nothing actually changes from the previous task.
This risks the student getting pigeonholed as an ‘X’ graded student, and their trajectory in your subject continuing mostly the same. This, sadly, is a common feedback loop that you may be familiar with.
I’ve been focusing on how to break this cycle in my own practice, working with students to ensure they recognise the importance of feedback above the task grade.
There are several challenges here – first and foremost being the separation of the grade and the feedback in both the minds of the students and the parents. The understanding that feedback applied to a low grade is just as pertinent as the feedback applied to a high grade. Individualised learning requires individualised feedback and that needs to be shared amongst students and parents alike.
Research by Wiggins (2012) shows that feedback not only needs to be individualised but also targeted, tangible, transparent, timely, on-going and consistent. This can be broken down into 3 key questions that Beaconhills College is working on:
- Where am I going?
- How am I going?
- What do I have to do next?
This is part of the College’s new model for ‘effective learning and instruction’. It is through this questioning we can aim to tailor the best feedback to our students and ensure that there is value added in their learning.
In addition to the question above, as discussed by Sadler (1989) the 3 actions that need to take place are: students being able to understand and know which level they’re striving for; how they compare to the standard they’re required to meet; and, finally, what action they will take to ‘close the gap’ (Lipnevich & Pandadero, 2021).
So, how can we help students understand this and use the feedback they receive from teachers to grow and take charge of their learning?
I decided to implement a 3-stage feedback loop using a variety of theoretical models and all-important one-on-one sessions with students. The goal was to give targeted feedback on summative and formative tasks and ensure that this feedback is ‘locked in’ through immediate implementation.
Step 1: Conferencing
This involves allocating time to sit down with the student; I’ve found this is easier to schedule with VCE (senior secondary Victorian Certificate of Education) students who have study periods – I also use lunch, recess and before or after school if possible and, when suitable, class time.
These sessions are a chance to go over the students’ work with them and provide feedback in person – reading aloud, taking notes, and then discussing the particular activity or task. This ensures the student is an active participant in the feedback cycle (Shute, 2008; Stobart, 2018), rather than merely being on the receiving end.
I encourage students to ask questions, and it’s a chance for me to clarify my concerns by asking them about what they’ve written and why, in order to gauge their level of knowledge and understanding.
These one-on-one sessions allow you to discover a lot about the students, and what their requirements may be regarding their own learning progress. From these specific insights you can individualise activities for them to complete to improve. For example, I use a flipped classroom for my VCE Business Management class, however for some students they still prefer to have target questions to do at home with a completion date to help motivate them. With this information I set those students specific tasks for them to complete, and then also use this as part of the next feedback session.
Step 2: Students engaging with the feedback
The second step is perhaps one of the most significant. The real power of feedback is in how students apply it (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Lipnevich et al., 2016; Carless & Boud, 2018). As I highlighted at the start of this article, and as Lipnevic & Pandero (2021) note ‘if instructors or peers prepare the best kind of feedback and students simply dismiss it, the effort will be wasted and no benefit will follow’.
Therefore, I return the work to the student and ask them to re-do the aspects of the task (this varies on the subject of course – in Business Management it may be a few questions rather than an entire test) implementing the feedback they have been provided within 24 hours. Although I couldn’t find theories discussing direct time frames, I feel that this quick turnaround is timely enough from them receiving feedback for students to engage with it and ‘lock in’ their learning. In my experience, this will guarantee 2 things: that the student has correctly understood the feedback that you’ve delivered (remember, you will have also had a one-on-one catch up as the first step); and by using the feedback immediately they’ll be able to develop their knowledge and understanding on how to correctly address a similar task in the future.
Step 3: Checking back in
This final step is quite simple. The student returns their revised work, and this allows you to ensure that they’ve implemented the feedback correctly. As this loop cycles with the timetable (mine is fortnightly) it’s a process that continues constantly and the feedback adapts, changes and improves along with the students.
I also use the time to catch up generally about how they feel they’re going and what their individual goal is in my subject. As we can all appreciate, each student has a different learning rate and pathway, and thus goal and direction in the subject.
As stated by Sadler (1989) the benchmark they’re working towards may depend on the student’s own subject goals. Some of my students have started the year with strong responses (and results) and the goal that we’ve created together is to achieve an examiner chosen sample response as their individual benchmark. For some of my students that have found the start of the year challenging, their benchmark is having a response that satisfies the requirements of the task wording and developing their understanding of the marking allocation of each question to guide the appropriate amount of response in their answer (this is all in relation to Business Management).
Establishing a strong, 2-way dialogue
It is important to remember that, as Dylan Wiliam (2017) notes feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor. Feedback is all too commonly a one-sided discussion where the teacher delivers information to the student that is often never addressed. Allowing students to be active in a feedback discussion, to be asked questions – opportunities to reflect and understand what they did right, just as much as what they did wrong – we can ensure feedback is another step of the learning process.
Wiliam and Barton (n.d.) explore this idea of feedback being like ‘detective’ work and an ‘invitation’ which opens up a 2-way dialogue and breaks the all-too-common narrative that began this article; here’s what you did wrong, improve next time, the end.
When this familiar cycle is broken and a strong, 2-way dialogue is established – where both recipient and provider are active – and improvements are made, feedback becomes an effective teaching and learning tool, not just for feedback’s sake.
References
Barton, C. (n.d.). Tip 94. Turn feedback into detective work. Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton. https://tipsforteachers.co.uk/tip94/
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315-1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
Lipnevich, A. A., Berg, D. A., & Smith, J. K. (2016). Toward a model of student response to feedback. In G. T. L. Brown & L. R. Harris (Eds.), Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (pp. 169-185). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749136
Lipnevich, A. A., & Panadero, E. (2021). A Review of Feedback Models and Theories: Descriptions, Definitions, and Conclusions. Frontiers in Education, (6), 720195. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.720195
Shute, V. J. (2008). Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), 153-189. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307313795
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119-144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714
Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Feedback for Learning, 70(1), 10-16.
Wiliam, D. (2017). Assessment and learning: some reflections. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 24(3), 394–403. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2017.1318108
What happens to the feedback that you give your own students? Do you discuss it with them? Do they understand your feedback, and do they act on it?
