Editorial
The landscape of education and…
We all want to do what is best for our students, and that obviously includes ensuring that they achieve requisite learning outcomes and develop to become independent learners. After all, learning is said to only occur when it is achieved to a good degree, independently by the learner, and on demand (Sadler, 2007). What is particularly challenging for educators is to be careful that the assistance given to students for their learning does not deprive them of the opportunity to independently process and demonstrate the learning. Hence the common conundrum – the more we try to help students learn, or (even) the more we try to make them independent, may at the same time make students more dependent on us.
That applies equally to feedback, which may be enacted in schools as frequent assistance and advice to students whenever gaps are identified or when flaws need to be corrected. But even if a student would diligently act on our feedback and address the gaps and flaws, would that in turn have created even more dependency on us for feedback?
I argue that we should not take it for granted that providing assessment feedback, even if it is acted upon, is always a good thing for our students. Given the frequency of feedback provision, and its potential to help to hinder students in their learning and development, it is important for us as educators to reflect on why we give, and should continue to give assessment feedback.
In Lipnevich and Lopera-Oquendo (2024), a questionnaire for understanding students’ Receptivity to Instructional Feedback (RIF) was recommended as a way to understand how students experience feedback. Students’ experience of feedback is unpacked in four dimensions, and I propose four fundamental questions in these same dimensions:
1. The Affective question – do all students want feedback in the first place?
2. The Cognitive question – is the feedback understandable to students?
3. The Utility question – is the feedback useful to students?
4. The Behavioural question – is the feedback acted on?
Question 1: Do all students want feedback in the first place?
Have you ever received frequent advice that you did not particularly want to hear? Or have you struggled with performing something and feeling so embarrassed, that reading honest reviews is something you wished you could avoid?
Think of any of your students who struggle in your subject, or those who regularly frustrate you with submitted work that compels you to correct and/or comment (on) every defect and detail. If you were that student – would you necessarily want to read instructional feedback that tells you how to find and fix your gaps?
Perhaps it is time for us to identify which students are ready to receive which types of feedback. And for students who are not yet ready for feedback, it is imperative to get to know their struggle and what they may need first from us, as teachers. If we see feedback as the automatic response of teachers to every assignment (because we are judged by how much feedback we give?), then we may only see our students as inadequate learners who need to be corrected in every assignment and in every way. But if we can see our students as novice learners with varying degrees of readiness receptivity, then perhaps we can cater our approach to feedback in ways that actually help them learn, and help them want to learn, independently.
So, the first vital question is essentially an affective one for us as teachers – do we understand how our students feel about feedback in the first place? When we establish that affective trust with our students, we have a platform to work with them so that our students feel that our feedback is intended to help them, and not just a reminder of their inadequacy. And in order for students to make use of our best-intended advice, the feedback has to be understandable to them. This brings us to the second vital question of assessment feedback.
Question 2: Is the feedback understandable?
If feedback is an emotional experience for students to read, then it can also be an emotional (or at least frustrating) endeavour for teachers to provide. Clearly, enhancing students’ feedback literacy would help them understand and engage with feedback. Understanding and using feedback should be a shared responsibility – the onus for comprehensible feedback is on teachers, and the responsibility to act on effective feedback advice is on students.
But we should also balance the students’ responsibility in feedback practice with their rights as well. When we prioritise feedback that is understandable to our students, we value them as readers who experience the act of reading text, words, and books in their own ways. In Pennac and Blake’s (2006) argument for the rights of the reader, recognition is given to when and how readers prefer to experience reading, rather than to assume that all readers will want to read all assigned texts and/or books. To create an independent capacity and desire to read, and to read well, readers need to approach reading on their own terms, and this includes choosing when to read, how much to read, or reread, and the right to read deeply or skimpily, etc.
My own argument is not to advocate for these same rights of the reader literally for all instructional contexts. These rights of the child to read will need to be balanced with the demands of the curriculum and the timings of assignments and responses. But what these rights are useful for is alerting us to how our students may read our feedback in a different way from what we had intended. These differences include choosing when to read feedback, how much to read, or reread, and the right to read deeply or selectively.
Let’s consider for a while the different preferences our students may have in reading our feedback. Do all our students want to read feedback that is scribbled on their written work? Would they want to decipher our hasty (or frustrated?) handwriting? Is prose or points preferred? Most importantly, how can we know what is most readable, and understandable, to our students in our feedback?
A good starting point would be to ask if students want to read our feedback. Or what kind of feedback they would like to receive and read. Then we can inquire into how to help them understand our feedback – what we mean with our words and why we insist on focusing on their gaps. And finally, we help our students understand why they should act on our advice.
So, this second vital question is a literacy question, and it is also a cognitive priority – how do we know that students understand our feedback? If we grasp how students feel about our feedback (the affective), and how well they understand our feedback (the cognitive), then the next vital question is to ensure that the feedback we provide is actually useful.
Question 3: Is the feedback useful?
This begs the question – what is the actual use of feedback? In Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) analysis of feedback studies, four general intentions for instructional feedback were identified – feedback is intended to address the task, the process of the learning, the self-regulated capacity of the student, and the characteristics of the student. In the more specific context of English Language written feedback, Hyland (1997) suggested the following uses of feedback:
1. Encourage any responses from students
2. Indicate a problem with the submitted work
3. Provide suggestions to improve
4. Clarify the requirements of the task
5. Provide an explanation of concepts
6. Express doubts
7. Invite response to teachers’ comments
8. Affirm that the student has shown understanding
9. Stimulate thinking
I would recommend the evaluation of feedback utility in terms of its immediate, imminent, and longer-term contexts. For example, Hyland’s (1997) suggested uses of feedback may be organized accordingly:
Different strategies in crafting and conveying feedback would be required for these diverse purposes of feedback. To (2016) suggested nine different strategies for feedback advice. The following table from her article lists the strategies with corresponding explanations and examples in verbatim:
These strategies may in turn be selected for immediate, imminent, and for longer term contexts.
For students who may not be ready to act on feedback, the immediate purpose of affirmative feedback is to help the student understand more about the task and the requisite learning, and to prepare the student to eventually be able to act on feedback. Strategies recommended for such students include (a) praising the strengths in the work and for the students’ effort, (b) the paired act of using praise to soften criticism of the work, (c) hedging teachers’ judgement to make it less direct and confrontational, and (d) using personal attribution to make the feedback sound more relational and conversational.
For students who are ready to act on feedback, the imminent purpose of actionable feedback is to explicitly instruct students on requisite actions to address gaps and enhance learning. In addition to (selectively) affirming students with immediate feedback strategies, strategies for imminent action may include (a) (direct) criticism of where and how the work needs improvement, (b) imperative feedback for attending to issues or matters that should have been complied with in the first place, (c) (direct) advice on what needs to be done.
And finally, for the longer-term context, feedback strategies may be directed beyond enhancing the quality of a piece of work to building students’ capacity to be independent learners. These strategies may include (a) questioning as a form of interrogating thinking, and (b) (inviting) self-assessment before teachers’ feedback is provided.
We have asked ourselves three vital questions focusing on the affective dimension (do learners want feedback?), the cognitive dimension (is the feedback understandable?), and the question of utility (is the feedback useful?). Finally, we pose the question that must be addressed in order for feedback to be effective in any way, the behavioural question – is the feedback used?
Question 4: Is the feedback actually used?
In his seminal article, Sadler (1989) had reasoned that the only way to tell if learning results from feedback is for students to make some kind of response to complete the feedback loop. Likewise, in the context of sustainable long-term learning, Boud (2000) argued strongly that “unless feedback is applied and used to demonstrate improvement, there is no way to tell if it has been effective” (p. 10).
Whilst it is of utmost importance that our learners act on our feedback, I would argue that we should think about students’ responses to feedback depending on students’ readiness and receptivity for action and improvement.
For students who are imminently ready to act on their feedback, practices such as the interactive feedback cover sheet (Bloxham & Campbell, 2010), and van der Kleij’s (2020) Feedback Engagement Enhancement Tool are appropriate for structuring processes for students to understand and use feedback. Such processes may be unpacked as a simple three-step feedback cycle (Koh & Tan, 2024) in terms of
(a) Assisting learners to anticipate and request for feedback through reference to performance standards. This is before students submit work and receive feedback.
(b) Enabling learners to read and respond to feedback in order to address their learning gaps. This is after students have submitted their work and have just received feedback.
(c) Ensuring that students act on feedback to close their gaps. This is after students have clarified the meaning of feedback and have an opportunity to use the feedback to address their learning gaps.
As I had argued at the start of this paper, we should not assume that all students are ready to act on feedback in order to improve their work. Some students may not be ready to read feedback in sufficient detail, let alone make the effort to revise or correct their work. Yet, teachers’ (or peers’) feedback can still be useful to these learners, if only we can think of other forms of response(s) that can benefit such students in the longer term.
One suggestion is to permit students to “respond” by rating teachers’ feedback with one of three symbols – a tick to indicate understanding, a star to indicate that the feedback is useful enough to warrant action, and a question mark to either indicate that the feedback is not understood, or that the student is not ready to act on the feedback. Such a practice in effect empowers students by putting them in the driver’s seat – they rate their teachers’ feedback, and the role of the teacher is then to seek and understand from the students how their feedback can be more understandable and useful.
This practice is recommended as a form of a feedback partnership between the giver and receiver of feedback. Students would need to approach this in good faith and give their teachers the opportunity to understand their struggles with feedback and suggestions on how they can be helped. Teachers should take the first step of establishing trust and assuring students of their sincerity and competency in assisting them to learn and improve. Such a partnership may offer a constructive approach for feedback dialogue that students may want in order to make sense of and make use of useful feedback they can understand.
Conclusion
On a more reflective note, a vital question that we should ask ourselves as educators is why we give feedback to students if we do not first ascertain how they feel, understand, appreciate, and want to act on our feedback. Feedback is a frequent occurrence in schools, and refining our approaches for immediate, imminent, and longer-term contexts would enhance the plausibility of practicing feedback for specific purpose(s). It is important for our students to engage with useful feedback affectively, behaviourally, and cognitively. It is just as vital for us to ponder how to help our students want understandable and useful feedback that they will use.
References
Bloxham, S., & Campbell, L. (2010). Generating dialogue in assessment feedback: Exploring the use of interactive cover sheets. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(3), 291-300.
Boud D. (2000). Sustainable assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society, Studies in Higher Education, 22(2), 151–167.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.
Hyland, F. (1997). The impact of teacher written feedback on ESL writers. [PhD Dissertation, The Victoria University of Wellington].
Koh, G., & Tan, K. H. K., (2024). The Feedback Pedagogy Cycle, in Assessment For All Learners. Available at https://assessmentforall.com/the-feedback-pedagogy-cycle/
Lipnevich, A. A., & Lopera-Oquendo, C. (2024). Receptivity to instructional feedback: A validation study in the secondary school context in Singapore. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 40(1), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000733
Pennac, D., & Q. Blake (2006). The rights of the reader. Walker.
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144, 2-s2.0-0039921137, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714.
Sadler, D. R. (2007). Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria. Assessment in Education: Principles Policy and Practice, 14(3). 387-392. 10.1080/09695940701592097.
To, J. (2016). ‘This is not what I need’: Conflicting assessment feedback beliefs in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 21(4), 447-467.
van der Kleij, F. (2020). Evaluation of the ‘Feedback Engagement Enhancement Tool’ to examine and enhance students’ engagement with feedback on their writing. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 66. 100907. 10.1016/j.stueduc.2020.100907.