Inspiring Thinking Through Feedback
Recently I was lucky enough to spend some time with a teacher who had developed a wonderful Assessment for Learning practice, particularly around Feedback.
This teacher had a Year 1 class who were in the middle of an inquiry on transport. In order to immerse ākonga in this inquiry and create an authentic writing prompt the teacher took the kids to the front gate of their South Auckland school to watch vans, motorbikes, cars, trucks and buses go up and down the road. Afterwards, they went back to class, where she set up their writing lesson. Being Year 1 students - post pandemic - she had noticed they needed support around learning to write a full complete sentence. So, the learning intention was to write a sentence. The success criteria included having a capital letter, a full stop and the sentence needed to make sense. They were also encouraged to add a bit of detail. The teacher unpacked and co-constructed the success criteria with an exemplar and students then had the opportunity to share their own ideas. They all shared with a buddy verbally before heading off to write independently. Some students stayed with the teacher, some worked with a teacher aide and some worked independently. Towards the end, some students who had completed their sentences, headed to the teacher for feedback. One girl, who had a home language of Tongan, completed her writing and showed her teacher.
This is what the teacher said: ‘Wow, I can see you have completed your sentence, what makes it good?’ The little girl looked at the sentence and thought for a while. After a few moments she said: ‘Well I have a capital letter at the beginning, and I have a full stop at the end.’ She did. The teacher then asked: ‘What could you do to make it even better?’ This time I was really impressed with the teacher's wait time. The student spent a lot of time thinking and given that she is bilingual, it was beautiful that the teacher allowed her the space without jumping in. After some time the student said: ‘Well I know how to spell all of these words, but I don’t know how to spell those words.’ She pointed to a list of colours on the board where the teacher had set up the lesson. What she wanted to do was add the colour of the car, therefore adding in the detail, the final success criteria.
This feedback was so effective. This student was thinking and reflecting and I felt like I could almost see the neurons firing in her brain.
The Research
We know that feedback is among the most powerful influences on how people learn and the evidence comes from many sources. John Hattie, Dylan Wiliam, Welby Ings, Carol Dweck, Helen Timperley, Russell Bishop are all educators who have looked closely at the impact feedback has on learning. I am going to draw on the work of John Hattie’s meta analysis here to highlight the importance of feedback as an effective classroom strategy. In his meta analysis, Hattie pulls together all the research that has been done in thousands of studies across the world, New Zealand included. Ultimately, this is research on the research. He categorises the classroom strategies that have the biggest impact on learning and he puts them onto a scale. This scale measures the number of effects each strategy has and gives it an ‘effect size’. The scale ends up looking like a bell curve - but interestingly, the middle or average effect size isn’t 0. The average effect of an average classroom strategy is .37, which is often rounded up to 0.4. You may have heard the discourse around the effect size of 0.4, this is where it comes from.
To explain further, something with a negative effect size will have a negative impact on learning, examples are suspension, expulsion or boredom. Something with an effect size between 0 and 0.4 will move learning forward, but not at an exponential rate, just by merely being in the class students will move forward, examples include background music, one to one devices or homework. However classroom strategies that make a positive impact on learning, over and above the progress they would normally make in one year at school have an effect size of 0.4 or more. And this is where feedback sits, with an effect size of around 0.7. In John Hattie’s book Visible Learning he ranks feedback in the top 10 instructional strategies for learning.
Dylan Wiliam goes so far to say the feedback doubles the rate of learning. But in order to do that the feedback has to be effective. And the problem with feedback is that it can be so variable. There can be as much ineffective feedback as effective feedback.
So what does good feedback look like? And how can we get it happening in our learning spaces? And how can we embark upon a collective approach at our kura?
Assessment for Learning
Well first you need to get a feel for what is happening with your Assessment for Learning practices. We can’t talk about feedback without talking about Assessment for Learning. This is the foundation for getting our students into the driver's seat with their learning. Where they have a good understanding of what they are learning and why, what good looks like, as well as what they need to do to get there.
At The Education Group we like to think of Assessment for Learning as a pedagogical process by which assessment information is used by teachers to adjust, reflect, adapt to refine their teaching content and strategies and by students to adjust, reflect, adapt and refine their learning strategies. Our framework supports teachers to understand these effective Assessment for Learning classroom strategies. In this case the teacher knew from prior learning that these students needed to learn how to write complete sentences. Therefore she knew what her learners needed to learn, she immersed them in a learning experience so that they could authentically approach the learning and she clearly communicated what they were learning, clarity of the learning expectations. She had an exemplar so they could see what success could look like and from that exemplar she unpacked and co-constructed with her ākonga the success criteria, further enhancing the clarity of learning expectation so they knew what they needed to do to be successful. And once all of this was set up then and only then was this teacher able to approach her feedback like a pro!
And these are the steps she followed to do so:
Step # 1: Provide clarity around what students are learning and why
In order to give good feedback we must ensure that ākonga are clear about what they are learning. They need to know what they are learning and why it is important that they learn this. Where we can, we need to make the learning relevant, we need to make it make sense and it needs to be purposeful. It is also essential to communicate to learners what success will look like.
Step # 2: Choose feedback carefully and co-construct with the students when you can
It pays to think of feedback as both feedback and feedforward. Feedback focuses on what students have done and feedforward focuses on what students need to do. It is good practice to be clear when giving feedback and not pour on the praise. Sometimes we can be too treacly in education - and this is something to note, because when we praise the pants off kids, they, like the rest of us, get that lovely dopamine hit and can get caught up in the praise and in their moment and they may not hear what comes next. Of course be positive - but be clear and don’t lay it on thick.
The teacher in the writing lesson said simply: ‘Wow, I can see you have completed your sentence, what makes it good?’ Here she is co-constructing the feedback with the learner. The learner's response depends on how clear they are about what they are learning. For some students you may not be able to construct and in this case, you could identify what they have done well, linking back to what they are learning. If you can, co-construct. As Dylan Wiliam says: ‘Good feedback doesn’t do the thinking for them.’ He says: ‘Good feedback causes thinking.’
The next question this teacher asked was the feedforward. The teacher asked: ‘What could you do to make it even better?’ and this is where the student was visibly thinking and this was highlighted by the wait time and space her teacher gave her. Her response directly related to the success criteria - adding more detail. As with feedback - it might take some scaffolding before students can identify what they can do to make it even better, until our feedforward is truly co-constructed. It is okay to support your learners by identifying what they can do to make their work even better, but when you can, co-construct, to support your learners to think. As Welby Ings says: ‘Only the person who made the work should critique the work.’
Step # 3: Ensure that students have the opportunity to act on the feedback.
It turns out that it isn’t giving feedback that causes learning gains - it is acting on feedback that will determine how much a student will learn. And sometimes, ensuring our ākonga have the chance to act on the feedback can be the hardest step. We often get rushed at the end of lessons, or we notice things students can work on and we say things like: ‘Remember for next time!’ When really the learning is going to stick at a much better rate if they get to apply it right there and then. If you wait until next time - it has gone. John Hattie says: ‘Students welcome feedback that is just in time, just for them and just for where they are in their learning process and just what they need to move forward.’
Some teachers start their lessons reviewing the previous day and give the students a chance to act on feedback. And some teachers pay careful attention to the time ensuring they finish with enough time for students to reflect and respond to feedback, whether that be from their teachers, a buddy or themselves. It may take some time to find the process that works for you.
These three steps should support you to create some solid feedback practices in your learning space. And you can go one step further by adopting a collective approach across your school.
If you want to develop a collective approach to feedback in your kura - give this a go and:
Share these 3 steps about feedback with your kaiako, kaiāwhina and leadership
Co-construct a common language around Assessment for Learning, specifically feedback across your team, kura or kāhui ako
Give teachers a chance to reflect on and amend their practice
Encourage teachers to record themselves teaching and giving feedback/forward
Invite teachers to be observed giving feedback/feedforward
Share learning together as a staff and form collective and individual next steps
To circle back to the research and effect sizes, there are other effect sizes at play here. Teacher clarity has an effect size of 0.75 and collective teacher efficacy which has a whopping effect size of 1.57. This means approaching this work around feedback collectively and collaboratively, sharing progress, sharing practice and sharing resources can have a profound impact in your kura on student impact. Jenny Donohoo coins collective teacher efficacy as the shared belief that through collective action, educators can influence student outcomes and increase achievement for all students. She goes on to say that: ‘Amazing things happen when a school shares the belief that they are able to achieve collective goals to support student achievement.’
The teacher from South Auckland worked her way through all 3 steps to increase the impact of learning in her learning space and the evidence was clear in the conversations had in her class. And here is the final sentence of the bilingual Year 1 student, once she had responded to the feedback:
I saw a white car going up the road.
She included the word that she wasn’t sure how to spell, therefore adding detail and successfully fulfilling her learning intention. Y1 or Y13, these 3 steps will support feedback and positively impact the learning of your students. Are you going to make amazing things happen?
