Navigating Feedback

Google Maps is a patient teacher.  She knows where I’m going and continually reminds me when I get off track.  When I miss a turn or make a mistake, she doesn’t get upset or give up on me.  Instead, she recalculates and tells me exactly what to do and where to go to keep moving in the right direction.  In fact, I find myself being much less patient with my GPS than she is with me. 

John Hattie and Gregory Yates argue that educators could use a GPS as a model for providing feedback to students.  Before exploring the GPS analogy further, take a look at the somewhat disturbing findings about feedback in the classroom.  Hattie and Yates came to these conclusions through a series of extensive interviews and classroom observations conducted by trained observers:

• Teachers routinely say they give lots of helpful feedback to students.
• Trained classroom observers see very little teacher-to-student feedback, even in classrooms with expert teachers. 
• Most students report getting very little feedback from their teachers, often only a few seconds of feedback a day.

The reason for the disparity, say Hattie and Yates, is that teachers believe they are giving feedback when they speak to the whole class, but the researchers conclude that group-level feedback “is largely irrelevant to those who have mastered an objective, and often ignored by those who have not.”  Ouch!  That hurts, but it also makes sense.  Anyone who has spent time in the classroom can relate.  The ones who know it, don’t need to listen.  The ones who don’t know it, often won’t listen.  Either way, the positive impact of feedback is negated in the whole-group setting.

The irony is that good academic feedback is essential for learning and can have a huge positive impact.  For example, Robert Marzano documents the extensive research about academic feedback and includes “setting objectives and providing feedback” as one his high probability teaching strategies in his still impressive book, Classroom Instruction that Works.  Feedback, when used well, can double the rate of learning and is among the top ten influences on achievement.  The question isn’t whether or not feedback is helpful.  Rather, it is this: What does “effective feedback” look like and sound like in the classroom? 

Hattie and Yates say this about using the GPS as a model for giving feedback:

[The GPS] can only look forward.  It remains unconcerned about any past streets, suburbs, or erstwhile errors passed through on route.  We may get to a location through using different roads and we may take longer or shorter to get there.  But such differences are superficial since options are constrained severely by reality.  At some point, all routes to one goal will converge, even though the starting points vary.

If we know where we want the student to go, and we know where he or she is now, feedback is the communication about the next step or next turn.  It is not praise, it is not generalizations, and if the researchers are right, it must be more than whole-group feedback.  If students are all over the map, to get them all to the same destination takes specific individual teacher-to-student feedback.  

Consider this scenario: You are one of 30 drivers spread out all over Hamilton County but all heading to the same destination.  You all are using the same GPS and it is trying to guide you all at the same time.  As one of the drivers, you might be able to get some help from this GPS giving whole-group directions to all 30 drivers, but most of the specific turns would not be useful until all of you are very close to the same point on the map. 

How much attention would you pay to whole-group feedback from this GPS?  If your answer is “not much,” it might be worthwhile also thinking about ways to increase the individual feedback you give to students as they move toward a common goal.

Below is another roadmap for effective feedback from Edutopia.  Similar to the other experts, this model argues for specific, individual, and actionable steps.   Start at 1 and work through 5.  It is another map that will take you home. 

I hope your week “turns” out to be a good one, HSE. 

Phil