Noteworthy Assignments (Sept 2026)

One of the most empowering realisations about learning any skill—including teaching—is that it is iterative. This is a liberating thought because it takes the pressure off feeling like any change we make needs to be “perfect” on the first try. It also anchors us into thinking about how the various changes we initiate in our Departments need to be constantly reviewed, as contexts change or new knowledge emerges, so that they are “actually part of a continuum in improving teaching and learning” (Ratnam-Lim, 2017, p. 46).

Faced with the perennial issue of seeing the same types of errors in our students’ essays, despite the copious amounts of qualitative feedback we provided (often through burning midnight oil), my Department embarked on a journey to develop our students’ feedback literacy in 2025. We came to realise that giving feedback to students does not “automatically” or “magically” improve their skills or boost their grades (Boud & Molloy, 2013). One of the key points of resistance students have towards feedback is that they sometimes take the form of “unilateral pronouncements by assessors” (Crisp, 2007, p. 578). To increase students’ feedback recipience, they need to see it as a dialogue that guides them towards improvements and a concrete way of investing in their own learning (Cook-Sather, 2006). These considerations guided the creation of our first iteration of the interactive feedback coversheet (Annex A). By providing the platform for students to articulate the aspect of their essays that they would like to receive feedback on, we sought to enhance the feedback partnership by involving them as decision-makers (Bovill et al., 2011).

The interactive feedback coversheet received positive reception from both students (who felt like they had a voice and agency) and teachers (who were happy to provide feedback in a more focused and needful manner). However, not every student was able to maximise the opportunity given to them to direct their own learning. For instance, their responses to what they were proud of ranged from the unreflective (“nothing”) to the mundane (“finishing on time”). Some students were also generic in the feedback they sought (“tell me how to improve”). I came to realise that one of the negative washbacks that could have arisen is that students who were “not even ready to form their views on their own work” (Wong et al., 2024) could be even more alienated from the process of seeking and interpreting feedback when faced with these very open questions. This actually demonstrates the way in which our tendency to short-circuit the thinking process by jumping to the “What” (i.e. students’ articulation of the feedback they would like to receive) and skipping over the “How” (i.e. steps that need to be undertaken to equip students with the know-how to do so meaningfully) can compromise the “Value” (i.e. desired improvements) of the changes we implement (Dorst, 2011).

Through the readings and concepts I encountered in this module, in particular, the session on Learning Progressions (LPs), I was reminded of how English language learning is not developmentally inevitable. It, too, requires targeted and direct instruction (Corcoran et al., 2009; Daro et al., 2011). This recognition is important on two counts. Firstly, it means that teachers and students alike should adopt a growth mindset towards language learning. Secondly, it helped me to see that the rubrics form the LPs for essay writing. Crucially, the descriptions of the success criteria in the rubrics help students to understand what they “can do now and what, most importantly, they should do next to enhance their learning journey” (Deakin et al., 2020, p. 1), honouring the fact that students progress in different ways and rates (Empson, 2011; Hammer & Sikorski, 2015). Rather than expecting students to know, intuitively, what kind of feedback they need, work needs to be put in to “support student learning of assessment expectations [as] that will also enhance the validity of the interpretations teachers make in terms of student learning and the next steps for instruction” (Rasooli & Lin, 2025 , p. 33).

Instead of just administering the interactive feedback coversheet after students have completed their essay, I will now design 3 phases of feedback, drawing on Lam and Tay’s (2024) 3P feedback pedagogy: comprising preparation, process, and post-feedback (Annex B). In the preparation phase, teachers can unpack the rubrics using exemplars to help students understand the expectations and give them the language to both ask for and interpret feedback. During the process phase, in the grading of each essay, apart from providing qualitative comments, the teacher can indicate the level of attainment for each success criterion on the rubrics and append it to the student’s script. At the post-feedback phase, students can identify and articulate an improvement plan for an aspect of their choice in the post-feedback reflection and action form (Annex C).

From the first essay to the next, students and teachers can see if there is any improvement in the specific success criterion, identified by the student as an area that he would like to work on, in terms of the level of attainment marked out on the rubrics appended to each script. Even if there were no increase in the marks on the next piece of writing, based on the annotations on the rubrics, information on whether the student has grown in his selected area of improvement can be obtained. Clearly, the rubrics, which are also LPs, become ipsative feedback that communicates to students their progress towards ipsative goals (Hughes, 2011; Malecka & Boud, 2021). This provides both the teachers and the students with a clear view of what constitutes improvement and allows the latter to check if he has achieved his self-referenced goals (Chue & Lin, 2024).

Apart from helping students to chart and track their personal improvements, the revised 3P feedback pedagogy design seeks to better help students to receive (intellectually and emotionally) and apply their feedback. The questions in the post-feedback reflection and action form reflect the affective, cognitive, and behavioural dimensions of feedback (Carless & Boud, 2018). By getting students to articulate what they found useful or confusing in the feedback they received, they are encouraged to not just understand (cognitive) but also honour the emotions (affective) they might feel with regard to the comments from their teachers. In order to close the transference gap, all feedback that comes from any external source (whether teacher, peer, or AI) will have to be engaged with, internalised, and converted into self- or inner feedback (Andrade, 2018; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Wong et al., 2022). This is where the improvement plan comes in: it seeks to get students to share what they will do (behavioural) with the feedback they have received. By employing the 3P feedback pedagogy throughout the year, students are supported to “iteratively revise their personal learning goals based on their progress and refine their strategies to improve”

(MOE, 2023, p. 13). By making feedback requests, interpreting feedback to understand the teacher’s perspective and the standards, as well as using the feedback and their own reflections to develop improvement plans, students demonstrate proactive recipience (Winstone et al., 2017). Such autonomous-supportive practices help us to achieve the goal of encouraging the growth of student agency and nurturing students to become active assessors of their own progress.

One positive washback that might arise from these changes could be improved well-being. Chue and Lin (2024) mapped ipsative processes onto the PERMA model of well-being (Seligman, 2011). Essentially, they posited that a clear progression pathway over multiple interconnected tasks allow for ipsative feedback to be given so as to make visible self-comparisons with past performances and these engender positive emotion, engagement, relationships, and meaning in students. These descriptions map onto the ipsative nature of the 3P feedback pedagogy, which allows for the learning of essay writing to be systematically accessed (by students) and assessed (by both students and teachers). Additionally, the emphasis on the affective aspect of feedback through the revised form and the option for students to meet the teacher for further conferencing and clarification could improve their emotional responses and resilience to feedback in general. In an education landscape where assessment evokes anxiety, it is my hope that this new iteration of feedback processes in my Department can help the polarity of assessment and joy of learning come to life!