School Leaders’ Perspectives on What Students Do with Feedback and How We can Strengthen That

School Leaders’ Perspectives on What Students do with Feedback and How We can Strengthen That

 

We were a group of six Vice-Principals, who have had the opportunity to work and lead in schools across the general education system, i.e. from primary schools to junior colleges. We attended NIE’s Leaders in Education Programme in 2022, and benefitted from rich exchanges with and generous sharing from colleagues and leaders in the teaching fraternity and NIE faculty members. We write this article with our heads and hearts, to humbly share our learning with colleagues leading and enacting needful changes in assessment. We welcome your thoughts and comments, and hope that we can continue our conversations and momentum to align assessment literacy to learning outcomes.

 

 

 

 

A. Aligning teachers’ assessment literacy to students learning outcomes – The importance of students’ feedback practices (Box 3)

 

 

In Tan (2022), a four-box theory for educators was proposed for linking teachers’ assessment literacy to students’ learning outcomes.

 

Teachers give feedback in their practice of assessment with the goal of guiding students towards meeting the intended learning outcomes. In between teachers’ feedback practices and students’ outcomes lies a crucial stage encapsulated in these questions: How do students receive the feedback? What do students do with the feedback? We have added a second row (shaded in grey) to the four boxes to unpack how the alignment of Assessment Literacy to Learning Outcomes may be lived out in our schools today.

 

 

From a school leadership perspective, it would be pertinent to inquire how each box is given supervisory oversight. Developing teachers’ assessment literacy in schools (Box 1) would typically fall to the leadership of the school staff developer, assessment champions, and IP heads. Ensuring and enhancing teachers’ proficiency in assessment feedback practices (Box 2) would be the purview of teacher leaders and Heads of Department(s). The articulation of, and accountability for, students’ learning outcomes (Box 4) would surely be closely led and monitored by school leaders and the school’s management committee. However, what about Box 3 – who has the direct responsibility for students’ actions and responsibilities in assessment feedback? If there is no leadership oversight for Box 3, is there a real risk that a weakened or neglected box 3 breaks the chain of alignment between what teachers know of assessment (box 1) and students’ learning (box 4).

 

As educators, we aim to nurture in our students the joy of learning and dispositions for lifelong learning so that they develop into Self-directed Learners and Confident Persons. Given the critical role that feedback plays in learning, it is important to explore how Box 3 impacts students’ learning responses to both external feedback and internal self-talk, their motivation to seek feedback for self-improvement, and the way by which feedback shapes their self-concept and self-confidence.

 

However, contrary to the above intent, we notice that schools tend to use “desired learning outcomes” (Box 4) as the guiding compass to design curriculum and scope new assessment feedback knowledge that teachers need to know (Box 1) and feedback practices they need to carry out (Box 2), without meaningfully considering how students respond to feedback (Box 3) in order to achieve these outcomes. This grand design for Assessment for Learning to uplift students’ learning outcomes suggests an implicit assumption that Boxes 1 and 2, if “planned right” and “done well”, would lead to Boxes 3 and 4. This would depend on what we desire and design as learning outcomes for our students.

 

B. Re-thinking the Boxes: Re-framing Students’ Learning Outcomes (Box 4)

 

The Singapore Teaching Practice’s “Assessment-Feedback-Learning Cycle” (MOE, 2021) highlights the importance of identifying students’ profile and learning outcomes, not only in terms of knowledge and skills but also values and dispositions. Hence, it would be critical for schools to first consider: What kinds of “desired learning outcomes” in Box 4 are we looking for – performance outcomes for subjects, or developmental outcomes for learners? While we do not shy away from upholding standards of academic rigour that enable our students to pursue their aspirations and dreams in life, we are conscious that the Desired Outcomes of Education (DOEs) transcend mere academic attainment. We hence offer that learning buoyancy – the learner’s motivation to try and try again until they make progress – and the learner’s confidence to formulate one’s next-step(s) in learning endeavours (Millican et al, 2020) should be key outcomes which we aim for in Box 4 in our schools. These outcomes help our students to gain self-confidence for mastery across different domains of learning that enable them to eventually attain their learning goals, and hone dispositions as self-directed learners that equip them for lifelong learning.

 

In this regard, we need to first re-frame the outcomes which we want our students to reap in terms of acting on feedback (Box 4), before we can critically examine what we want students to do with the received feedback in their practice of learning in Box 3. With clarity in Boxes 4 and 3, we can thereafter consider how we could gradually shift the responsibility of learning and assessment from teacher-directed experiences (Box 2), and the assessment knowledge they need (Box 1), to empowering students towards desired learning responses and learning goals in Boxes 3 and 4 respectively. This aligns as well with Tan’s (2022) exhortation for curriculum leaders and educational practitioners in their approach towards assessment feedback enactment, to start with Box 4 and progressively work towards equipping teachers with the requisite assessment feedback theory in Box 1.

 

Having said so, the relationship across Boxes 1 to 4 may not be as linear or chronological as depicted, nor do practitioners necessarily work from Box 4 back to Box 1 for effective professional development design to raise assessment and feedback literacy competencies. For example, teachers often implement feedback practices in Box 2 (after diligently-planned professional equipping in Box 1) and anticipate that students will be able to respond in Box 3 to the feedback provided. When students do not respond as intended, some teachers sometimes still proceed with what they had planned. Other teachers might return to Box 2 and take it upon themselves to revamp their feedback practices with the aim of shaping students’ responses towards what is desired. In staff professional cultures characterised by reflective practice, dialogic interaction between Boxes 2 and 3 can take place iteratively. Similarly, the process should also iteratively re-shape and refine what takes place in Boxes 1 and 4.

 

In our schools, we tended to habitually start from the paradigm of teachers as shepherds leading students through engagement with feedback. Yet this focus on teacher-transmissibility may have unwittingly shrunk curricular spaces for our learners to take ownership over and hone confidence in making sense of feedback to formulate their next-steps in learner responses. In reflection, we inquired of ourselves: Have we as curriculum leaders articulated these links between the four boxes and guided our schools/teams to foreground students’ feedback recipience and engagement with feedback? After all, insights on students’ affective, behavioural and cognitive engagement with received feedback should feed back into curriculum leaders’ and teaching practitioners’ design and decisions for refinements in Boxes 1 and 2, to enable students to move towards the desired outcomes in Box 4. How then, can we as curriculum leaders re-design curricular spaces and learning experiences to enable students in their practice of learning and teachers in their practice of teaching (in Box 2) to bring Box 3 to life?

 

C. Broadening Box 3 – What does it take for Students to Act on Feedback?

 

In the same vein, we pushed beyond teacher-transmissibility to re-examine the basis of our beliefs about Box 3 – beyond “what students do with teachers’ feedback” (Tan, 2022), we need to broaden our understanding of the sources of feedback that students deal with in Box 3 apart from teachers. In reality, students receive and perceive feedback about their learning (both task and process) from multiple sources. External feedback can come from peers as well as mentors and knowledgeable others, while externally observable outcomes (e.g. fellow learners’ task and process responses to the same learning undertaken vis-a-vis their own) are also sources of feedback (Nicol and MacFarlane, 2006). Students receive and need to make sense of these multiple feedback internally before forming strategies to move learning forward. Evidently, for each student to generate paths of internal learning response, motivation, knowledge, conceptions of self and learning, personal learning goals, buoyancy towards learning setbacks, learner dispositions, etc., all matter (Millican et al, 2020)—Box 3 is indeed far larger than we imagined! How then, have we as curriculum leaders developed our teachers’ sensitivities and perspectives towards what Box 3 truly entails for our students?

 

Nicol and MacFarlane (2006) observe that internal regulatory processes are critical for each student to make sense of feedback received from multiple sources, through which the student makes connections with learning goals and existing knowledge to formulate next-steps for learning. In the diagram by Nicol and MacFarlane below, these internal regulatory and sense-making processes are mediated by motivational beliefs as well as cognitive and affective responses. Through Growth Mindset, increasingly visible in many of our schools, our students are increasingly imbued with requisite head knowledge about motivational beliefs. Having said that, AfL practices need to provide clear feed-up that can address students’ domain knowledge and goals. In addition, students need teachers’ support in honing their internal regulatory processes through strategy knowledge and empathetic connections that lead towards behavioural responses that can be fruitful for learning. This is where well-designed feedback practices and developmentally-responsive teacher-student dialogues could be pivotal in guiding students to make sense of feedback received and generate possible next-steps to progress their learning.

 

 

                                                   

 

 

The grey rectangle as observed by Nicol and Macfarlane‐Dick (2006) above, however, remains largely a black hole for many teachers in our schools (and also for many students, whose internal regulatory and feedback sense-making processes have been left unexamined). In this regard, Box 3 offers an opportunity for curriculum leaders and teachers to peer behind the curtain of each learner and to “make it stick”. If Box 3 was absent, the model would be purely teacher-focused and teacher-driven – the essential question posed by teachers would be: How can our feedback practice be changed to achieve the stated outcomes? With Box 3, learner individuality, agency, and choice can now be foregrounded – the essential question posed could thus be: How may our learners’ responses shape our assumptions, feedback practices and curricular spaces?

 

From our conversations with fellow educational practitioners and through our observations, the ownership and understanding of Box 3 at present seems characterised by the greatest degree of ambiguity—while fellow educators unanimously agree that Box 3 needs to be owned and acted upon by students in engagement with feedback, few can profess with confidence that their students are able to do so on their own, or are able to describe how students actually engage the feedback they receive to inform their practice of learning. Based on academic outcomes, there are no doubt students who are able to “do Box 3 well”, to “land well in Box 4”. Nevertheless, student agency, if exercised with learner confidence, remains largely uncaptured (after all, these students would hardly fall under academic concern or risk) and certainly seldom feeds back into PD design and practices of teaching (Boxes 1 and 2). This begs the question of how much of the outcomes demonstrated in Box 4 arises from, or in spite of, what happens in Box 3. We argue for Goh’s (2021) big ideas on what feedback should do for students’ learning: help students find and fix their learning gaps; make students want and be good enough to fix their gaps; encourage students to go beyond fixes and gaps. With this in mind, we now examine present assessment feedback practices which schools may build on to bring Box 3 to life.

 

D. Enacting the Four Boxes – Building on Present Practices in Our Schools

 

In our schools today, our teachers have clearly raised their assessment competencies in tandem with assessment literacy and are familiar with various AfL tools, including moves to check for understanding. We are heartened by the feedback practices that have organically and thoughtfully taken shape in our classrooms through teachers’ dedicated efforts at supporting students in learning outcomes, and we encourage teachers across schools to continue to deepen their craft, share, and learn from one another in nurturing students of different needs and profiles. Having said that, needful changes to feedback practices cannot be left to chance. AfL as practised in most classrooms in Singapore remains focussed on task and process level feedback, which in turn should inform the learning design and delivery for subsequent lessons. While teachers have wielded AfL with skill and finesse to achieve domain-specific or discipline-specific process or task outcomes in the short term, the fundamental question is how AfL can also be harnessed to inform teachers’ understanding of cognitive and affective responses – essentially, internal regulatory processes – that each student grapples with.

 

Building on typically observed practices in schools, we highlight several key themes and insights which emerged and shed light on how we can further build on our existing practices to equip and empower students for agentic feedback engagement in Box 3. These include (but are not limited to):

 

a)     Taking a proactive and deliberate stance towards student feedback recipience. All feedback artefacts elicit responses from students (whether intended or not), but in most of the assessment artefacts we observed (e.g. grades, written feedback, praise, ticks and crosses, positioning on rubrics), students’ responses to feedback are either (i) left unattended (i.e. teacher is not aware of their response) because the design of the assessment artefact and process does not facilitate the retrieval or observation of such information; or (ii) even if the teacher is aware, is not used in an iterative manner to inform instructional practice. While most teachers do look at assessment data and outcomes to inform teaching actions (e.g. identifying learning gaps, common mistakes, misconceptions etc.), very rarely does the manner in which students’ responses to feedback (i.e. Box 3) inform teachers’ pedagogical design considerations for feedback.

 

      There would be value for teachers to be cognisant of how to design assessment artefacts to better sense the affective, behavioural and cognitive engagement by students (Goh, 2021).  Close attention to feedback artifacts, including the design of spaces for teacher-student dialogues focused on students’ feedback recipience, has great potential to improve the pedagogical design and implementation of learning experiences in the classroom. Creating dialogic feedback space is of particular importance, as it highlights the need to go beyond the feedback tools, and not be constrained only to what the teacher does, but also how a teacher chooses to devote bandwidth to student recipience. Enabling such proactive feedback recipience is multifaceted, and teachers should reach out to the student to understand 1) how the student is learning; 2) how the student feels about feedback received; 3) how the student processes the feedback; and 4) how the student chooses to act on the feedback.

 

b)  Explicit vis-a-vis Implicit Responses. Students have both implicit (hidden) and explicit (observable) responses to assessment feedback. Implicit responses would include how students make sense of the feedback to process their learning gaps (cognitive), and how it informs and draws upon their beliefs, perceptions, emotions and motivations about themselves as a learner (affective). Explicit responses would include the actions they take (e.g completing corrections) as well as how they change their behaviours and actions in response to the feedback (e.g. increased motivation to pay attention in class, adopting a different strategy towards understanding or task completion, etc.). Having said that, the extent to which a student’s implicit responses shape his/her explicit responses is seldom considered in depth, beyond visible impacts of emotions such as “morale” or “confidence”. In instances when teachers were cognisant of student response (which as mentioned above, was not common), they tended to focus on explicit, observable behavioural responses, and less on the implicit cognitive and affective responses. There is value in considering feedback modalities which can render the implicit responses visible and explicit (e.g. invitation to reflect or respond, in writing or in discussion). Our sensing is that such modalities are not the prevailing norms in schools at present.

 

c)     Dependence on Student Profile. The manner in which students respond to feedback is highly dependent on the type of learner they are. Our group found three main archetypes of student learners: i) engaged and performing; ii) engaged but struggling; and iii) disengaged (could be performing or struggling). The three archetypes tend to respond to feedback quite differently, in ways which could be constructive (e.g. feeling motivated, elated) and/or undesirable (e.g. feeling more unmotivated by the lack of attainment, attributing blame to teacher competence, disregarding the feedback entirely, or mired in a sense of loss at what to do next even if they feel compelled to act, etc.). The manner in which students receive feedback differs across the various profiles of students based on their (i) level of engagement; and (ii) perception of their own ability. It would be helpful for teachers to be cognisant of these differences to tailor their feedback practices towards different needs-profile for learners of learning (and not just students of subjects). More importantly, we urge teachers to foster communication, trust and psychological safety (To, 2002) in feedback engagement, tailored according to student profile.

 

d)   Individual vs. Collective Lens. Through our observations, prevailing assessment practices seem largely influenced by individual teacher practice. Beyond Boxes 1 and 4, there seemed to be little departmental or school-wide influence or control mechanisms (through structures, processes, etc.) on how teachers should go about being aware of, attending to, and influencing students’ recipience to feedback. While continuing to maximise the space of autonomy that teachers have in pedagogical enactment, we may have to exercise collective curriculum leadership to re-align individual teacher practices (Boxes 1 and 2) towards honing students’ feedback recipience, beyond disciplinarity-focused assessment practices. Given the importance of what students do with feedback, there is value in re-balancing the present decentralised, organic approaches of pedagogical autonomy in our schools to arrive at a more loosely-centralised approach to build a coherent assessment culture, where we as curriculum leaders can help teachers be sensitised to and deliberately design, curate, and employ assessment artefacts and practices to develop students’ recipience to feedback positively. 

 

E. Leadership and Pedagogical Implications – How Curriculum Leaders and Teachers Can Think Differently about Box 3

 

The vital role of Box 3, coupled with its enlarged scope/complexity, and yet having little or no direct leadership oversight, is a potent mix with implications for schools and educators to identify and address.

 

First, how can School Leaders enable organisational relationships and cultures where our KPs exercise collective ownership over Box 3 as curriculum leaders? We imagine that enabling students to “do Box 3 right” requires synergies across the IP and Student Development domains (e.g. connecting head knowledge of Growth Mindset with application in receiving and processing assessment feedback), for the desired outcomes of what students ought to do with assessment feedback across all domains of learning are invariably connected with MOE’s DOEs. This means that Box 3 must be everyone’s business, to enable the potential and optimal impact that Box 3 can have beyond assessment per se, and must not be left to organically manifest.

 

Secondly, how can School Leaders encourage re-thinking of AfL practices and re-design of curricular spaces that equip and empower students to act on received feedback, to feed their learning forward with agency and confidence? Positing these students’ feedback practices in curriculum spaces recognises the integration of curriculum and assessment, and firmly thrusts the Box 3 responsibility of students’ feedback actions into the hands of curriculum leaders. We recommend four priorities to preserve curriculum space for student agency in feedback

Positive Feedback Recipience. What is the effect of scores/grades on students’ recipience of feedback? Should we give grades and if yes, when; why? Lipnevich and Smith (2008) found that the effect of feedback is best when it comes with no grade and no praise.

·       The grade has the most significant negative effect on high-scorers. It interferes with students’ learning because if students have reached the grade which they have set for themselves, there is little incentive to act on the feedback to act on the grade.

·    Grades still have a role for summative assessment and sorting mechanisms, but on an ongoing basis, grades interfere with learning and hence it may not be good for students

·       Grades signal a finality to the achievement and students tend to develop a fixed mindset where they identify themselves with the grade, e.g., “I am a B student.”. Moving to rubrics or more descriptive classifications encourages students to see the current achievement as temporary and to adopt a Growth Mindset to attain the next higher band.

Effective Feedback Modalities. How can rubrics be most effectively implemented so that students use it to further their learning? Should rubrics be used without exemplars? Should exemplars be used without rubrics? What are the feedback mechanisms and modalities that can best provide effective feedback information and feed-forward approaches, that give students confidence to act on?

Timely Feedback Dialogue. How can students be better supported in making sense of multiple sources of feedback they receive in the course of learning, from teachers, peers, and perceived through their own sensing of their relative performance and progress, to formulate effective next steps to progress their learning? How can students reconnect with “resourceful others” to broaden their repertoire of strategies? How can we empower teachers with more mind space and curricular space to engage in timely and responsive feedback dialogue and relationships of trust to help students better understand themselves as learners and overcome learning obstacles that they otherwise are unable to do on their own?

Feed-Forward Focus. How can we re-model teacher paradigms to design learning where students act on feedback received, rather than act to get the right answers and the right workings? To enable the above, can we re-design homework and its second / third lives, or the focus of book and file checks, or the educational practices-in-focus for lesson observations? What are School Leaders’ and KPs’ roles in modelling and enabling such changes where we place feeding forward at the centre of learning? What trade-offs might we be ready to deal with?

 

F. Conclusion

 

In assessment practice, the Four Boxes are mutually reinforcing, with each being critical in its own ways to achieving learning and learner outcomes. The relationship between Boxes 1 and 2 is more straightforward, connecting head knowledge with action – deficiencies in either can be quickly observed and available interventions are available to directly remedy them. Box 3, however, is where the rubber hits the road, where theoretical (head) knowledge meets the reality of diverse learner needs. The true measure and essence of education is not how well our teachers teach, but how well our learners learn such that they are able to transfer their learning to the next task and the next learning goal independently. And this in itself provides valuable information on how skillful teachers are in empowering students through the way they wield assessment feedback strategies at their disposal. As curriculum leaders, we have critical roles to play in helping our teachers think differently about Box 3 and to bring it to life for our students.

 

In this thinkpiece, we have offered more questions for curriculum leaders and teachers to think about, rather than solutions or practices to adopt. Just as we wish to bring Box 3 to life for our students, we hope you are engaging this thinkpiece in your own Box 3 of curriculum instructional learning. Rather than jump from desired outcomes of practice (Box 4) to changes in our practice (Box 2), it is important for us to consider how we think about the ideas surfaced and questions asked (Box 3), to ask ourselves what we would do with what we have just learnt.

  

 

 

References

 

Goh, R. (2021). Designing quality assessment feedback practices in schools. Singapore: Pearson.

 

Lipnevich, A. A., & Smith, J. K. (2008). Response to assessment feedback: The effects of grades, praise, and source of information. ETS Research Report Series, 2008(1), i-57

 

Millican, R., Shafi, A. A., Templeton, S. and Middleton, T. (2020). ‘Using Assessment Feedback to Develop Resilience’, in A. A. Shafi et al. (eds.), Reconsidering Resilience in Education: An Exploration using the Dynamic Interactive Model of Resilience. Switzerland: Springer

 

Ministry of Education, Singapore (2021, June 14). Assessment and Feedback. The Singapore Teaching Practice. https://www.opal2.moe.edu.sg/csl/s/singapore-teaching-practice/wiki/page/view?title=Assessment+and+Feedback

 

Nicol, D. J. and 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, pp.199–218.

 

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

 

To, J. (2022). Fostering Trust in Feedback Processes.  Assessment For All Learners https://assessmentforall.blogspot.com/2022/01/fostering-trust-in-feedback-processes.html