by Chua Syin Thian, Management and Leadership in Schools Programme, July 2023
Issues Identified in Feedback Practices
As a secondary school Chinese Language teacher, one of the biggest frustrations I face is students making the same mistakes again and again despite feedback given to them in a timely manner. During one-to-one consultations, many students show that they are unaware of these repeated mistakes until I direct them to read the feedback written on their work. After reading the comment, students ask questions such as what they can do to rectify the mistakes, and what is the correct way of writing.
Upon reflection, I realize that there are two possible causes of students committing the same mistakes in their work. Firstly, students are not engaged in responding to feedback given. There is not enough opportunity for students to digest the comment and attempt a new task to demonstrate their understanding. Secondly, the feedback given does not provide enough useful instructions for students to close the performing gap. Hence, the assessment change that I would like to work on is how teachers could give effective feedback to better engage students in closing the performance gaps. My target group is secondary school students, and the focus area is Chinese essay composition and email writing.
Tan (2022) illustrated how assessment literacy may lead to learning outcomes using 4 boxes as shown below:
Out of these four boxes, the 2 major issues identified in my current school are “What teachers do in terms of assessment feedback” in Box 2 and “What students do with teachers’ feedback” in Box 3. My observations are explained as followed:
Proposed Changes and Its Implementation
Nicol & Macfarlane Dick (2006) pointed out 7 principles of good feedback practices:
- Clarify what good performance is
- Facilitate self-assessment
- Deliver high quality feedback information
- Encourage teacher and peer dialogue
- Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self esteem
- Provide opportunities to close the gap
- Use feedback to improve teaching
Out of these 7 principles, my proposed changes aim at 2 areas: First, teachers deliver quality feedback information and second, students are provided opportunities to close performance gap.
- Delivery of Quality Feedback Information
To increase the uptake of feedback by students, I propose that other than pointing out students’ mistakes, teachers must intentionally include constructive advice and what are the strategies students may use to improve their standard. Some examples are as followed:
- Provision of Opportunities to Close Performance Gap
To complete the stage of closing the performance gap, students should be taught the strategies to improve their performance and they need to demonstrate this understanding by performing a new task. I will recommend teachers to design a new question with similar difficulty level and request students to attempt different tasks according to the mistakes they made in previous task. This new task not only tests students on the application of relevant skills, but it can also serve as additional practice for higher ability students so that they are meaningfully engaged while other students are doing their corrections.
Possible Resistance and Ways to Overcome
I foresee that teachers will agree on the importance of including strategies in feedback so that students can act on them when performing a new task. But because this new practice involves two major changes: the content of feedback (more detailed and longer) and the creation of additional small tasks (to close the performance gap before students attempt the 2nd task), it will add to our current workload and consume more time in marking. Hence, I should start small by inviting 1 or 2 other Chinese teachers who are willing to try out this new practice to work with me. We can each experiment with 1 of our Upper Secondary Chinese classes for this new practice as Upper Sec students are required to write both narrative and argumentative essays.
The possible issues that may surface when implementing the 2 new practices are as follows:
- The first issue we need to address is what to include in teachers’ feedback. We need to decide on what is the content and how much information we would like to include in the feedback so that the comment is useful for students to act upon.
- Another possible issue is workload. Other than designing additional tasks for students to rectify their mistakes, teachers also need to carve out lesson time to implement additional activities as well as mark students’ work. Teachers may also struggle with giving differentiated comments and strategies as students’ abilities and needs are varied.
2 Ways to Overcome:
1. Compile a list of comments and suggestions that can be used by teachers when marking essays and emails.
- As a team, we can first list down common mistakes that students make in composition and categorize them. After that, we share the useful strategies or recommended suggestions according to the categories. Besides that, we should also create differentiated strategies for students with higher and lower abilities. In the discussion, teachers will be able to learn from each other’s sharing as we may have different ways of writing feedback to students.
- After coming up with the list, we should also simplify the sentences so that it is succinct and easy to understand. Teachers are strongly encouraged to use the list of standardized feedback as it is carefully considered and discussed by all teachers. However, teachers are also given the choice to exercise their judgment whether they need to give simpler instructions or introduce more complex concepts to selected students.
- In the long run, we as a team also need to develop the competence to clarify the success criteria of each task and be clear with the specific learning outcomes, so that when we give feedback to students, the comments and suggestions will be more on point and targeted.
2. Changes made to the current design of Chinese writing paper.
- The proposed change will require teachers to write longer feedback as it includes instructions and guiding questions. The current Chinese writing papers that students use may not allow teachers to do this as it does not have much space. I propose to change the current design of the writing paper so that there is ample space for teachers to pen down their comments neatly.
The Need for Better Teacher and Student Assessment Literacy
Teachers hold so much power as designers of assessment, decision-makers for assessment standards, evaluators of students’ learning, as well as instructors in closing students’ performance gap. Teacher assessment literacy affects the validity, reliability, authenticity, and fairness of assessment. If we are not competent in implementing a well-designed assessment, which leads to low assessment efficacy, schooling may become a rather unpleasant learning experience for some students (Sadler, 2007). For example, a very common situation that is happening in many schools is when teachers are not clear with the purpose and criteria of assessment, they may misuse assessment as a tool to modify students’ behaviour and to solve classroom discipline, by using marks to get students’ cooperation.
Another important takeaway for me is moving from teacher-centered assessment to more student-centered assessment. Firstly, the effectiveness of assessment should be measured by the student’s performance (what students have learnt), instead of the teaching process (what teachers have done). Secondly, we should promote student assessment literacy. Students should be trained in understanding the learning outcome of assessment and the success criteria, as well as identifying their performance gap and strategies to close these gaps. This has been an area that I neglect very much as our department emphasizes a lot more on teachers’ competency rather than student literacy. We see students as passive receivers at the other end and all the responsibility lies with teachers.
For myself, assessment lectures and seminars turned out to be one of the most enjoyable lessons I had in the MLS Programme. Other than attending lectures and tutorials, I benefited a lot by reading the materials given. Those essential readings introduce useful theories, models, and practices and point out blind spots in our current assessment practices. One way to keep myself growing in assessment literacy is to cultivate the habit of reading educational articles or books. After becoming a teacher for so long, I finally went to READ@Academy website and took a serious look at the resources offered by them. There are journals and e-books that I can borrow and read online without going down physically to Malan Road. I also found a long list of curated readings for the MLS Programme! When we are back in school, I know the chances of sitting down quietly to read and reflect are very low. Perhaps I should start small by picking up the habit of doing weekly reflection and planning first. Once the habit is cultivated, I shall include some reading to “feed my soul”.
References
Nicol, D., & Macfarlane Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (2), 199-218 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090
Royce Sadler (2007) Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 14:3, 387-392
Tan, K. H. K. (2022). The Four Boxes of Assessment Literacy Feedback. Assessment For All Learners. https://assessmentforall.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-four-boxes-of-assessment-feedback.html