Editorial
The landscape of education and…
by Cara Chew (Teaching Fellow, Learning Sciences and Assessment, NIE), and Kelvin Tan (Policy, Curriculum and Leadership; Learning Sciences and Assessment, NIE)
Introduction
Have you ever received advice you did not need, or want, or did not work? Was the feedback given upon request, or imposed on you without any warning? And if it was advice from someone you know, did the feedback strengthen or strain your relationship?
Feedback from others is a fact of life for all of us. It may differ in terms of how helpful the feedback advice actually is (utility), how we feel about the feedback (affectively), whether we even understand the advice (cognitively), and whether we will actually act on the advice (behaviourally). When feedback is useful, understood, and used – it can make a world of difference to the problem we are trying to resolve or it can even grow us significantly and strengthen our relationship with the person rendering the feedback. Unfortunately, the opposite is just as true – feedback advice that is unnecessary, unhelpful, and unwanted, may worsen predicaments and strain the best of friendships.
What then can we do to discern when feedback is needed and what kinds of feedback are useful for our friends and loved ones to use for their own good? As educators, some answers lie in principles of instructional feedback! And in this paper, we take the opportunity to discuss how instructional feedback practices can be applied in personal contexts beyond school, to strengthen our relationships and to enhance our quality of life.
The context for these musings is a recent short course conducted for middle leaders in which conventional feedback principles were reenvisioned in a relational context. Recognising the key challenges that givers and recipients of instructional feedback face when they encounter feedback, we seek to address these challenges by exploring ways in which instructional feedback can be made more meaningful and beneficial to both parties. This article explicates our attempts at refining instructional feedback practices by engendering a respectful, dialogic space for feedback, informed by key ideas from three best-selling books:
- Bo Seo’s Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard (2022)
Bo Seo’s RISA Checklist for productive disagreements – whether the disagreement is Real, Important, Specific and the two parties are Aligned in their objectives for the disagreement – was adapted to the context of instructional feedback, highlighting the key conditions that should be in place in order for feedback to be acted upon meaningfully.
- Joshua Steiner and Michael Lynton’s From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You (2026)
We employed Steiner and Lynton’s DUET (Disclose, Unpack, Empathise and Trust) framework for feedback as a means to learn from mistakes, underscoring the transformative power of instructional feedback
- David Brooks’ How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023)
We drew on Brooks’ ideas on the big questions to ask, how to structure good conversations, and how to listen empathically in order to know the other person deeply, reframing feedback as deep knowledge of the feedback recipient, and foregrounding the importance of relationships for feedback to be successful.
These key approaches to instructional feedback formed the basis of our six-week elective, titled “Assessment Leadership and Feedback for a Better Life”, for the Management and Leadership in Schools (MLS) course at the National Institute of Education from March to April this year. Participants were engaged in thoughtful discussions, reflections and role-play, and co-constructed a practical toolkit to make refinements to their leadership of instructional feedback practices in their respective schools.
In this paper we will focus particularly on David Brook’s ideas on strengthening conversations and deepening empathy and relationships as key priorities for building the relational dimension of feedback in our lives.
Brooks’ Elements of Good Conversations, Right Questions, and Listening with Empathy
Our focus was to enable participants to see the other person more deeply before giving them feedback. In other words, the relational dimension of feedback was reinforced. The feedback-giver should aim to be an illuminator, seeing the other with tenderness, receptivity, active curiosity, affection, generosity and a holistic attitude. He should also practise patience, playfulness and other-centredness in the process of journeying with the feedback recipient.
In short, the relational dimension of feedback comprises these three key aspects:
- Elements of a good conversation
- Big Questions
- Empathy
A: Elements of a good conversation
The elements of good conversations proffered by Brooks were then applied to the participants’ professional contexts, through role-playing dialogue:
- Treat attention as an on/off switch, not a dimmer
Pay attention 100%. Apply the SLANT method: Sit up, Lean forward, Ask questions, Nod your head, Track the speaker. Listen with your eyes.
- Be a Loud Listener
Practise active listening. Be so active you’re practically burning calories. Be like the host of a dinner party – exude warmth towards your guests, show them how happy you are to be with them, draw them close to where they want to go.
- Favour Familiarity
Find the thing that the other person is most attached to. Lead with a question about it.
- Make Them Authors, Not Witnesses
Ask for stories about specific events or experiences. Draw out what lessons they learned and how they changed as a result of what happened.
E.g. “What was your first thought when your boss told you that you were being laid off? Was your dominant emotion dread, humiliation, or perhaps relief?”
Then, ask them how they are experiencing now what they experienced then. E.g. “In retrospect, was getting laid off a complete disaster, or did it send you off on a new path that you’re now grateful for?”
- Don’t Fear the Pause
Wait for the end of the other person’s comment, then pause for a few seconds to consider how to respond to what has been said, hold up your hand, so that the other person doesn’t just keep on talking. This creates space for reflection.
- Do the Looping
Repeat or paraphrase what someone just said in order to make sure you accurately received what they were trying to project. It forces you to listen more carefully.
E.g. If the other person says, “My mother is a real piece of work.”, respond with, “What I hear you saying is that you were really pissed at your mother.” Then pause to see if they agree with your paraphrase.
- The Midwife Model
Adopt the posture of a midwife. Assist the other person, receive and build on the insights that they are developing. Prod and encourage a deeper honesty in them.
E.g. After asking “What do you like about your job?” and listening to the other person, ask “Can you think of an easier way to get what you find satisfying about your job?”
- Don’t Be a Topper
To build a shared connection, sit with the other person’s experience before you start ladling out your own.
E.g. If they tell you that they are having trouble with their teenage son, don’t turn around and say, “I know exactly what you mean. I’m having incredible troubles with my Kenneth.”
“When you are asking a good question, you are adopting a posture of humility. You’re confessing that you don’t know and you want to learn. You’re also honoring a person.” (How to Know a Person, pg 87)
A good conversation provides the optimal context for offering and receiving feedback. Feedback is crafting good advice, rather than conveying advice tactfully. Feedback is a dialogue whereby a problem or a need is discerned, and concern for the person is demonstrated by thoughtful rather than tokenistic help. Hence, feedback takes place best in a conversational context that emphasizes listening with trust and empathy.
B: Big questions, Big impact
Brooks’ ideas on the right questions to ask also offered the participants much food for thought with regard to how they could see the other person more deeply and provide feedback that would be more readily accepted and acted upon. These right questions are dependent on context/ situation, and require active listening:
Big questions that interrupt the daily routines people fall into and prompt them to step back and see their life from a distance, to look at the big picture.
E.g. If the other person is feeling overwhelmed, ask them about their ultimate goals, their skills and their schedule:
- What do you want to offer the world?
- What are you doing when you feel most alive?
- How exactly do you fill your days?
After listening and processing the information, offer an analytic frame to help the other person think about the problem by ranking the things that they really want to do on one card (Card A) and the things they are actually doing on another (Card B).
On a third card, write out a strategy for how they can get Card B to look more like Card A.
Other ‘big’ or right questions suggested by Brooks that were thought-provoking:
- What crossroads are you at?
- What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
- If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing?
- If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating?
- If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?
- Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?
For more examples of big questions that enable one to step back and look at the big picture, please refer to Appendix A.
C: Empathy ensures that we understand what the person is experiencing in order to know what they may actually need from us
Lastly, participants applied and adapted Brooks’ recommended skills for empathetic, active listening, particularly when accompanying those who are emotionally wounded and wrestling with complex issues, to suit their professional context:
(a) Mirroring
- Experience the emotions of the person by reenacting in your own body the emotions the other person is holding in theirs.
E.g. Smile at smiles, yawn at yawns, frown at frowns.
- Recognise the emotions of the person in front of you and distinguish between the different emotional states you yourself experience e.g. anger, frustration, pressure, stress, anxiety, angst, irritation.
E.g. Listen to music, reflect on your relationships, be attuned to your own body and be an expert at reading it to have a wide emotional repertoire to draw on
(b) Mentalizing
- Figure out WHY the other person is experiencing what they are experiencing by relying on our own experience and memory.
E.g. Ask yourself, “What is this similar to?” and enact “projective” empathy – project your own experiences and memories onto the other person’s situation, to rise to a higher level of empathy.
(c) Caring
- Get out of your own experiences and understand that what the other person needs may be very different from what you would need in that situation.
At the end of the session, participants were invited to be wiser – to witness the story, to be really good confidantes and coaches, enabling others to be truly honest with themselves, to be receptive, to see others’ gifts and potential, even the ones the other person does not see – and to individually reflect on:
- What it means to be wise/ wiser in their professional or personal life.
- How they would apply what they had learned about knowing people who matter to them deeply, in order to provide good/ better feedback to them, for a better life for all.
Practising empathy, for a start
Of the three feedback moves, perhaps empathy was the most complex and evasive to understand and appropriate astutely. Empathy goes to the depth of a person’s hurt, or suffering, and great care must be taken not to prematurely claim to understand a person we have not gotten to know sufficiently, or a person whom we have not yet won trust with. Empathy could therefore be the litmus test for how deeply we know a person, and how much it will take for us to win sufficient trust in our relationships to (fearfully) offer advice and feedback.
We thus wanted to spend more time grappling with what empathy entails in feedback and relational contexts. Letter writing was designed as a form for empathy-building – participants were offered the choice to write a letter to themselves, to be opened in exactly a year’s time, as a commitment to themselves and to their community.
They were also invited to submit a post-session reflection on the following question:
With regard to the first week’s example of the person who rejected your feedback/advice or with a new example, describe how another person should know you, or be known by you, in order to accept your advice/feedback.
This question generated many thoughtful and thought-provoking responses, three of which have been reproduced in this article. This is the summary of the responses:
To read the responses in their entirety, please refer to Appendix B.
From the reflections that the participants submitted, it was evident that they had learned that practicing empathy required them to step back and look more deeply within themselves, and at the other person, to see from the other person’s perspective and to offer themselves to be understood by the other person as well. They also learned that empathy, built on trust, is essential for feedback to be meaningful to both parties.
Conclusion
The participants, in their groups, created a variety of artefacts as applications of their learning, which reflected the rich diversity of personalities in this course. The artefacts comprised:
- Detailed materials for Key Personnel to enhance their feedback practices in their conversations with their Job-Holders, paired with a separate set of materials for Teachers to give more effective feedback to their students
- A story reflecting on what feedback means to Middle Managers and how feedback for students can be enhanced to increase their receptiveness to it
- A structured approach to using the Critical Incident Questionnaire in the classroom, across subjects and disciplines, as well as in the departments led by the participants, to harness the power of feedback and engender more critically reflective practice
- A chatbot created by the participants to manage difficult conversations in school
- Strategies to build feedback trust for a better life
- Strategies to lead through affirmation and empathetic listening
These artefacts highlighted the participants’ appreciation of the power of feedback to enhance learning, strengthen relationships and bring about greater wellbeing in their professional and personal contexts, as well as a recognition of their role in creating the necessary conditions and structures to engender more meaningful feedback in their professional lives, in particular.
The starting point of the course was the creation of respectful, open dialogues between teachers and students to improve instructional feedback practices. It soon evolved into a series of life lessons about the transformative power of conversations, questions, and empathy. Ultimately, these practices can change how we handle feedback not just in the classroom, but also in our personal lives.
Feedback that is built on empathy and trust, good questions and good conversations, enables us to lead a better life. Practising empathy, building trust, asking good questions and having good conversations are by no means easy, and it is our hope that this article has explicated some of the ways in which we can refine our practice of empathy, questioning and dialogue, so as to enhance feedback and lead a better life overall.
Appendix A
Other big questions that enable people to step back and look at the big picture
- What have you said yes to that you no longer really believe in?
- What is the no, or refusal, you keep postponing?
- What forgiveness are you withholding?
- How have you contributed to the problem you’re trying to solve?
- What is the gift you currently hold in exile?
- What’s working really well in your life?
- Tell me about a time you adapted to change.
- What are you most self-confident about?
- Which of your five senses is strongest?
- Have you ever been solitary without feeling lonely?
- What has become clearer to you as you have aged?
Appendix B
The three reflections in full
Response A:
In my previous post, I wrote about my student who received feedback on improving his composition writing, especially on adding details and organising his ideas. His writing remained brief and lacked development despite my feedback. The student was academically weak in language. I realise that he may have been daunted by the challenging work that was assigned to him. If I had better understand his starting point, I could have given feedback that felt more manageable.
I want to be seen by students as someone who supports, not judges. I have to practise to be patient, given ample time and walk alongside students. When they know that I will guide them step by step and not expect immediate perfection, they are more open to trying. When students repeatedly experience small success through my guidance, they begin to trust the process. Over time, feedback becomes something they are willing to act on, rather than avoid.
Response B:
The MLS course has taught me to view an issue/context by considering multiple perspectives and through different lenses so as to have a comprehensive understanding and analysis before considering action(s) moving forward.
Specifically with regard to the feedback example that I shared in the first week, there are indeed two sides to the story.
1) How the recipient of feedback should be known to me
- It would have been better if I had checked in on the mind/emotional state of the recipient before sharing the feedback to ensure that he/she was ready for the feedback.
- I could also have initiated a conversation to understand the recipient’s perspective first before I decide if the feedback was necessary/apt.
2) How I should be known to the recipient of feedback
- That I am someone who only shares feedback with those that I care about. My well-intended feedback could have been misconstrued through my communication manner or my non-verbal cues depending on the mind/emotional state that I was in when communicating the feedback.
- I was merely trying to help provide an alternative perspective and not intended as a suggestion to act upon.
Response C:
With respect to my first week’s example about an experienced teacher who rejected my feedback, I think one reason why she was not open to the feedback was because I was still fairly new to the school and the department at that point in time and so they did not fully know me/ trust me.
In order for her to be receptive to my feedback, it would be good for her to know:
- My personality: that I am introverted in nature but can become more open and vocal in discussions when I am in a familiar and comfortable environment.
- I am a team player and would value team harmony and dynamics over individual needs
- How I think: I value face-to-face discussions over emails/text and may ask questions before coming to a decision because I need to have a more complete picture of the issue before I am comfortable to commit to a decision.
- My educational journey thus far: e.g. the schools I have taught at before coming to this school, number of years in service etc.
- My working style: that I value structures and processes and hence my decisions may be shaped by existing processes, but I am open to constructive discussions.
On the other hand, it would have been good if I know more about the experienced teacher in terms of:
- Her beliefs about teaching and learning, pedagogy and assessment
- What are non-negotiables for her and why is that so
- Her style of teaching over the years and her dynamics with the rest of the teachers in the department.