I have been thinking a lot about feedback lately. In our world we are often in positions to give feedback, either as part of our jobs or sometimes unsolicited. Just think about the amount of times that people respond to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram posts giving opinions or other feedback. We are a culture that now thrives on giving our two-cents worth. Of course, some would argue that posting an opinion on a social media site is not really feedback, but it is. When we offer our opinions or judgments we are altering the way someone sees an idea and this in turn may cause the person to reflect, get angry, or even change a behavior. But often when we think about feedback we couch it in the idea of giving someone information about how they are doing based on a set of standards or expectations.
In my career as a teacher and an administrator I was often in the position to get and receive feedback. There is no manual for feedback. I often have reflected on feedback in my work, and I have morphed over time. Feedback is such a critical part of what we do, and we have learned a lot about feedback over the years. I hear a lot from teachers about feedback, and some of the feedback about feedback that It get is that it takes too long or that the time and effort of giving feedback is not worth it because students do not listen to or take feedback. So, I want to begin by looking at some research on feedback.
To completely understand the impact of feedback, we have to look at the central command center: the brain. First, let’s take a look at a recent study where a total of 300 people were giving feedback in a large retail establishment. The manager was concerned when reading the comments because there was so much negativity in the comments. So, Alex Rios, a founder of Happyforce, a company that gathers and processes feedback for organizations, looked at all the comments to analyze. What he found was that 60% of the comments were positive and only 10% were bad comments, the manager interpreted the feedback as 90% negative. So, what is going on here? Well, our brains are the key to thinking about this. As Alex Rios, points out, “When it comes to the way we process feedback it’s important to understand that every single stimulus we receive is processed in first place by our reptilian brain. This brain has an instant response classifying everything into three categories: threat, food or something to ignore.” Further, in her article, "Our Brains Are to Blame: The Neuroscience of Feedback”, Jennifer Marshall Lippincott points out that “we now understand enough about the neuroscience of everyday behaviors to know that our brains are to blame. For instance, we can’t 'undo' old habits. They are too ingrained, the neural pathways hardened by repetition. But the good news is that we can create new ones – and our brains will do the rest.”
Our brains automatically take in situations and determine if they are a threat. If the brain perceives that they are, then it shuts down, and all feedback, in this case, will not be processed or processed very little. In short, the feedback will not cause the change in behavior and performance that we are looking for with the intent of feedback.
When we think about feedback to students then, it is important to consider all of the above neural research as well as other research about how we give feedback. In a 2019 study by Buckingham and Goodall published in Harvard Business Review, feedback was perceived as “about telling people what we think of their performance and how they should do it better.” However, “The research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.”
Another key component to thinking about feedback in this way is that feedback using data is a quantitative measure and feedback through questioning and reflecting is a qualitative measure.
So, what can we do as educators and educational professionals who are constantly called on to give feedback? In a 2013 ASCD article, Authors Art Costa and Bob Garmston defined the five forms of feedback. In the article, the authors discuss the following forms of feedback:
Evaluations and Judgments- qualifying your feedback ("This is creative" or "Great job!"
Personal Opinions and Preferences ("I like the opening paragraph" or " I liked the way you designed the poster")
Inferences, Causality and Interpretations- Feedback that requires the receiver to infer ("Your purpose was clarified as you developed the response."
Nonjudgmental Data- giving feedback that is concrete ("You used three examples" or "You used a proven method to solve the problem.")
Reflective Questioning- Questions that invite the person receiving feedback to reflect (Considering the rubric, what details might strengthen your paper?" or " Reflecting on your purpose, what might be some ways that you could enhance the add to the product?"
When our feedback rests in the first three forms, we are either giving superficial feedback that does not spur people to improvement or we are activating the part of the brain that goes into survival mode, thus cutting off potential learning for improvement.
However, when we focus feedback on the last two forms, the brain opens up to process new learning that can lead to enhanced performance. With using data and mediative questions as feedback, we activate the neocortex in the brain. As Rios points out, “Our neocortex is great at processing data, abstraction and planning.”
Another key component to thinking about feedback in this way is that feedback using data is a quantitative measure and feedback through questioning and reflecting is a qualitative measure. Through asking mediative questions (qualitative stimulus) and offering data (quantitative stimulus), we invite the one getting the feedback into the conversation and he or she is able to reflect on their own thinking as we, the teacher, the evaluator, or the coach, mediates their thinking.
I often share these two videos with teachers when I talk about feedback in the classroom:
Elementary Example (focus on giving data as feedback)
High School Example (focus on questioning and differentiation)
Both of these videos serve as good examples of what this kind of feedback looks like operationally in the classroom. I think that it is important to note that the feedback we are focusing here is formative feedback. Often as teachers we think about summative feedback. Becoming skilled at engaging students (and adults) in reflection through questions and looking at their product v the standard, the student is then equipped with understadning to improve (recall Austin's Butterfly?)
As We Work to Give Feedack During Remote Learning:
As we are all transitioning into remote learning and we are moving away from assigning grades and giving feedback, this is an opportune time to hone feedback loops with students. So as we are considering our assignments and feedback, some ideas that come to mind are
Think about assignments that give students an opportunity to apply learning and to construct a product from the learning. If all we put in front of students are opportunities to give right or wrong answers, we are immediately taking away the ability to reflect on learning. This is not to say that students do not need to build background knowledge or learn factual information, but leading them to application of ideas makes for stronger, transferrable learning.
As students are producing a product or applying learning, make sure that the criteria for assessment is clear. Rubrics, of course, help to foster Nonjudgmental Data. The more specific the rubric, the more objective the data feedback is. Ensure that you are building rubrics that have qualifiers of measureable work and not point values.
When assessing with feedback, always strive to ask at least two reflective questions that are open-ended and spur the learner to make improvements, and give the learner the opportunity to make improvements. Feedback is not in a vacuum, so feedback particularly questioning and data require that we give students the opportunity to self-modify and apply their reflections.
In short, we need to ensure that our feedback toolbox is rich with tools that we can use to help our students become self-directed and self-reflecting so that they apply that skill to the task at hand as well as transfer to other situations.
Works Cited:
Buckingham, M., & Goodall, A. (2019, April). The Feedback Fallacy. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy.
Costa, A., & Garmston, A. (2013, June). Five Forms of Feedback. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol8/818-costa.aspx.
Lippincott, J. M. (2018, February 9). Our Brains Are to Blame: The Neuroscience of Feedback. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/performance-management/our-brains-are-to-blame- the-neuroscience-of-feedback/.
Rios, A. (2018, April 2). How badly our brain processes bad feedback… and how to do it right. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://medium.com/my-happyforce/how-badly-our-brain-processes-bad-feedback-and- how-to-do-it-right-8966fe1ab5f3.