Smart Feedback, Pt. 3: The Four Levels
Takeaway:
Three of the four levels of feedback build upon one another for enhancing student learning, yet one can be demotivating and harmful. Knowing how to leverage feedback along with timing is essential in student growth and teacher effectiveness.
Guiding Questions:
What is the usefulness of FT and at what stage should it be used?
How is FP more than just feedback on how the student is doing?
How can a teacher coach students to use FR?
Why is FS sometimes harmful and to be avoided?
Summary:
There are four levels of feedback that educators provide on student performance. Three of those levels are focused on student behaviors and can greatly enhance student success and development. One level is regarding a student’s inherent abilities and can be demotivating when used. Knowing how to use the three most valuable forms of feedback and in which order can lead to both success in the current task and create a loop of success for future tasks.
Feedback About the Task (FT)
It is easy to imagine a teacher standing next to a student's desk and asking questions or providing feedback about how they are doing. In fact, 90% of all questions that teachers ask in class are at this lower informational level. Essentially, FT is commonly used to see if students are acquiring the knowledge that is instructed in class.
However, FT can be incredibly powerful. To make it so, the teacher must focus on this type of feedback to be regarding the student's misgiving or misunderstandings, not a lack of information. FT at its best is correcting the student's interpretations to ensure that they are constructing knowledge with accuracy.
FT is most effective when it is able to move a student from FT to FP and then to FR. Too much feedback at the FT level can take away from a student's performance. As students filter feedback through their own perceptions and understandings, FT allows the teacher to ensure that it is being filtered properly and that the student is able to most benefit from the next levels.
What does FT look like? It is feedback that can be delivered to an individual or group (although the individual benefits most) specifically about student performance on a given task. The goal is to direct the student to constructing knowledge and not necessarily to check in to see if they have learned the content. FT is the vehicle to help the learner to be receptive to hearing FP.
Feedback About the Processing of the Task (FP)
FP focuses on providing feedback to the student about how they are processing their knowledge and understandings to successfully complete a task. The teacher using FP is able to connect what the student is doing to a broader perspective. This allows for deeper learning and understanding.
FP can be great in helping students improve their ability to detect their own errors. Focusing on the process of learning or performing allows the student to be more self-directed and reflective. In essence, at the FP level, students are receiving feedback not about what is right or incorrect, but on how they are going about being successful. It is behavioral in outcome and mindful in income.
Feedback at the FP level is commonly more effective that FT, especially when used to assist students who have made errors in their own processes. Working with the student to help them ensure they are going about learning and achieving in an effective way is not only important in terms of achievement, but also in preventing students from disengaging out of frustration. Coupling FP with goal setting can really help ensure success at this level.
Feedback about Self-Regulation (FR)
This source of feedback strays from the first two in that it relies heavily on coaching how the student should think about how they are going about their task and not about the student him or herself. Successful learners are able to create an internal feedback loop that provides a sense of checks and balances while they work and learn. These loops help keep them focused, disciplined, and working autonomously. The challenge is that these loops have to be developed and are rarely coached or taught by educators.
Students learning how to self-assess is incredibly important as it helps them reflect and understand how they are going. This ability to self-diagnose reduces reliance upon their teacher for feedback, but also increases the skills to apply what feedback they have received. Naturally, there can be quite a curve regarding who can do their own FR that corresponds with age and development, yet all people have an inner dialogue on how they are performing and learning.
For FR to be effective, the educator can demonstrate their own thought and reflective practices out loud by modeling it. Also, teachers should create norms in the classroom that would require students to follow through on these practices and help build the FR habit. Educators can then begin to grow and strengthen these processes by asking FR related questions to students that focuses on the process, students adaptability to challenges, and for students to explain their reasoning in going the direction that they did.
Feedback About the Self as a Person (FS)
FS is typically the least effective form of feedback as it is based on direct praise or criticism of the student. When feedback is personalized to the individual, an educator can take away the student’s internal locus of control. Meaning, the educator can make statements about the student that are about them as a person (qualities oftentimes seen as immutable) and not about their behavior (which are changeable). This can be grossly demotivating.
The purpose of feedback is to help a student understand how they are doing, guide them in their thinking and process, and develop in them internal habits so they can provide their own feedback. Once teachers take that away and make the feedback about the student him or herself, teachers can take away the agency and autonomy of the student. This is why providing smart feedback is essential in student learning and success.
Leadership Thoughts:
Educators learning how to leverage the right kind of feedback at precisely the right moment does not necessarily happen organically. How much more true is this for leaders? It can be easy for us to focus on quantifiable results (test scores, enrollment, finances) and to miss the more important qualifiable ones (staff engagement, retention, development). Utilizing the three necessary types of feedback allows leaders to not only encourage their staff members to go in a specified direction, but it can create a mechanism that makes growth and development a part of your school’s DNA.