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Includes some neat posters at the bottom of the page.

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Giving feedback on pupils' completed work is a curious business. I couldn't even begin to calculate the hours I have spent over the years writing comments in pupils' books to tell them how to improve the answer to a question that they are unlikely to ever answer again. The problem is, as Dylan Wiliam explains in his chapter of What does this look like in the classroom?,that we seek to improve the work and not the student.

If we do try to leave comments that apply also to future pieces of work then these will be, by necessity, very generic. Writing, as I have done countless times, "you need to explain your points more" or "include examples as evidence for your point" is only useful feedback if you genuinely believe the pupil did not do these things as a deliberate choice and rather because they didn't know how. Wouldn't it be more useful to give them this advice before they started?

What would it look like if we gave feedback to pupils before they had done the work? "Feed-forward" rather than feedback? We could then ensure they had the information and advice needed to complete the work well the first time and to apply the same ideas to future pieces of work. Luckily, this type of "feedforward" already has a much more familiar name: modelling.

Why model?

I would like to suggest that we start to think of modelling as a form of pre-emptive feedback. Years of experience has taught me that I am likely to need to tell pupils to explain their points better, so rather than writing this on their work when the work has been done, I now model how to do this before they begin. Rather than giving feedback that they should have used examples, I now model how to do this before the error is made. By making my expectations clear at the start I can ensure that my classes practice getting their work right and avoid making these errors permanent.

Modelling in this way also helps to dramatically reduce workload as there are far fewer errors that need to be corrected, and much less need for individual written comments in books explaining where they went wrong in the hope that they will put it right in the future.

Finally, modelling like this helps our pupils to experience success. They can complete a piece of work to a very high standard, and a piece of work that doesn't then end up with corrections scrawled all over it. It is very hard to build any kind of "growth mindset" if they don't believe they are capable of meeting your expectations. Modelling and careful scaffolding helps them to see just what they are capable of.

Better modelling

At its most simple, modelling is showing pupils what it is you want them to do. But, as with all simple ideas, doing it well can be a bit more complex. Here are five ideas for getting modelling right.

1. Have a clear criteria for success

Before we can model what an excellent piece of work looks like, we need to decide on the criteria for ourselves. What are the characteristics for your particular subject? How might these expectations change over different key stages? How might they vary depending on the type of question? Share these criteria with the students and produce annotated examples of work to typify them.

2. Plan for errors

Start by considering the errors that are likely in a piece of work. These might be fairly generic issues or ones specific to a particular topic. Make a list of these issues that you will want to address before students start work.

3. Model live

Write a model answer yourself in front of the class. As you are doing this, explain your thought process. Show how you are overcoming the issues and common errors on your list: "Notice I am explaining this point by..." or "I am going to consider the economic case for sustainability here so will say..."

4. Model the errors

Ultimately, we want students to be able to self-regulate their learning. An important aspect of this is the ability to spot and correct errors in their own work. Take your list of common errors for a piece of work and use them to create a terrible model answer that includes as many of these mistakes as possible. Ask the class to identify the issues and suggest how it could be improved.

5. Remove the scaffolding

A potential issue with modelling is that pupils might be tempted to simply copy the model you have produced - after all, how much better could it be? One way to get around this is to write a model answer to a similar question but with a different focus. In geography this might mean modelling an answer to the question "How well prepared was Italy for the 2009 earthquake?" before asking them to answer the same question for an earthquake in Nepal.

Feedback is an important part of the learning process. We need to know where we went wrong and how to improve in the future. However, what is even more useful is being given clear instructions in advance so that we get it right first time and can apply the lessons again and again.

That's a model I can get on board with.

Mark Enser is head of geography at Heathfield Community College. His first book, Making Every Geography Lesson Count, is out soon. He tweets @EnserMark

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Giving feedback on pupils' completed work is a curious business. I couldn't even begin to calculate the hours I have spent over the years writing comments in pupils' books to tell them how to improve the answer to a question that they are unlikely to ever answer again.

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Designed for HE, but lots of useful resources here.

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Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on students' learning. There is a strong evidence base on effective delivery of feedback: what it should contain and how it should be framed. However we know far less about students' reception of feedback information. If we want students to engage with and utilise the feedback we provide then what skills do they need and how do we nurture these skills? In this resource we first outline some of the key contemporary issues facing Higher Education practitioners in the domains of assessment and feedback and we consider the role and responsibility of the student in the feedback process. We then present a case study which outlines the development and implementation of the Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit (DEFT). Finally we present each component of the toolkit in turn: a feedback guide a feedback portfolio and a feedback workshop.

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The Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit (DEFT)

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Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on students' learning. There is a strong evidence base on effective delivery of feedback: what it should contain and how it should be framed. However we know far less about students' reception of feedback information.

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In recent years, research has confirmed what most teachers already knew: providing students with meaningful feedback can greatly enhance learning and improve student achievement.

Professor James Pennebaker from the University of Texas at Austin has been researching the benefits of frequent testing and the feedback it leads to. He explains that in the history of the study of learning, the role of feedback has always been central.

When people are trying to learn new skills, they must get some information that tells them whether or not they are doing the right thing. Learning in the classroom is no exception. Both the mastery of content and, more importantly, the mastery of how to think require trial-and-error learning.

The downside, of course, is that not all feedback is equally effective, and it can even be counterproductive, especially if it's presented in a solely negative or corrective way.

So what exactly are the most effective ways to use feedback in educational settings?

Although there is no quick or easy answer to this question, here are five research-based tips for providing students with the kind of feedback that will increase motivation, build on existing knowledge, and help them reflect on what they've learned.

1. Be as Specific as Possible

In a review of the available research titled " The Power of Feedback," University of Auckland professors Helen Timperley and John Hattie highlight the importance of supplying learners with specific information about what they are doing right or wrong.

For example, feedback like "Great job!" doesn't tell the learner what he did right, and likewise, a statement such as "Not quite there yet" doesn't give her any insight into what she did wrong and how she can do better the next time around.

Instead, researchers suggest taking the time to provide learners with information on what exactly they did well, and what may still need improvement. They also note that it can be helpful to tell the learner what he is doing differently than before.

Has a student's performance changed or improved since the last time you assessed her? Let her know about it, even if she still has a long way to go.

2. The Sooner the Better

Numerous studies indicate that feedback is most effective when it is given immediately, rather than a few days, weeks, or months down the line.

In one study that looked at delayed vs. immediate feedback, the researchers found that participants who were given immediate feedback showed a significantly larger increase in performance than those who had received delayed feedback.

Another research project from the University of Minnesota showed that students who received lots of immediate feedback were better able to comprehend the material they had just read.

Of course, it's not always possible to provide students with feedback right on the spot, but sooner is definitely better than later.

3. Address the Learner's Advancement Toward a Goal

Timperley and Hattie note that effective feedback is most often oriented around a specific achievement that students are (or should be) working toward. When giving feedback, it should be clear to students how the information they are receiving will help them progress toward their final goal.

4. Present Feedback Carefully

The way feedback is presented can have an impact on how it is received, which means that sometimes even the most well-meaning feedback can come across the wrong way and reduce a learner's motivation.

Psychologist and author Edward Deci has identified three situations in which feedback could be counterproductive:

When learners feel too strictly monitored: If learners feel that they are being too closely monitored, they might become nervous or self-conscious, and as a result, disengaged from learning.

When learners interpret feedback as an attempt to control them: Learners may sometimes interpret feedback as an attempt to control them or tell them how they should be doing something rather than guidance on how to improve.

When learners feel an uncomfortable sense of competition: Feedback shared in a group setting could cause learners to feel like they have to compete with their peers. This can be another source of disengagement in learning.

To avoid these situations, Deci suggests fully explaining the purpose of any monitoring, and ensuring that learners understand how the feedback is meant to help them compete against their own personal bests rather than each other.

5. Involve Learners in the Process

The importance of involving learners in the process of collecting and analyzing performance-based data cannot be understated. Pennebaker says:

Students must be given access to information about their performance . . . At the broadest level, students need to know if they actually have mastered the material or not. Giving them information about the ways they are studying, reading, searching for information, or answering questions can be invaluable.

When students have access to this information, they develop an awareness of their learning, and are more easily able to recognize mistakes and eventually develop strategies for tackling weak points themselves.

In the comments below, please tell us about how you give your students feedback, and about how it affects their learning.

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5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback | Edutopia

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In recent years, research has confirmed what most teachers already knew: providing students with meaningful feedback can greatly enhance learning and improve student achievement. Professor James Pennebaker from the University of Texas at Austin has been researching the benefits of frequent testing and the feedback it leads to.

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10 top tips

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Quite simply, effective teaching hinges on oral formative feedback and questioning on a lesson by lesson basis. It appears to me that the greatest benefit of experience that I observe in excellent teachers is the recognition of how and when to elicit feedback, with the nuanced understanding of what questions to ask, how and when. I have drawn upon this wealth of experience for my top ten - indeed it is my inept stumbling near the shoulders of giants that is responsible for the whole lot!

In nearly all of these examples the feedback includes all three parties possible in the class: the learner, peers and the teacher. I dispute the idea of peer feedback as an undertaking exclusive of the teacher - we are always there steering the feedback, establishing ground rules and success criteria, modifying and adjusting the feedback of peers - that is why we are the paid experts! Therefore I do not differentiate between 'teacher led' or 'peer' feedback in my list.
My Oral feedback Top 10

'Making the Learning Visible' - Oral Feedback on Worked Examples

This heading captures a variety of methods and tools to essentially do the same thing - showing student work in the midst of the process. Whether it be through an iPad and Apple TV; a Visualiser; a video camera or still camera, or more simply pinning ongoing work up onto the wall or a display; making the work 'visual' is a powerful tool for assessment for learning. For one, it raises levels of pride, giving students a keener sense of purpose, and it often instills a healthy competitive edge to the learning. It is also evident that most successful students have an innate sense of what 'good work' looks like, but many students simply don't have this degree of self-efficacy. Making visible exemplar work, and breaking down its component parts, is a simple and powerful way to modify the learning of each student - helping to enhance what Ron Berger described as the crucial assessment going on "inside students".
2. Guided Writing
Ostensibly, the strategy is a writing task - but it is the ongoing oral feedback at the heart of this strategy that is essential in establishing where the learners are and where they are going with their learning. This is one of those activities that teachers often shy away from, perhaps through a sense of fear of making a mistake in their writing, or not having absolute control of behaviour whilst undertaking the writing (a neat trick is to select a student to scribe the guided writing to allow you to freely roam the room; or going one step further and having an object passed around that students need to hold to contribute. Working effectively, it can harmonise a symphony of understanding. Given any topic the teacher can begin with a prompt to the writing to oil the wheels, before students are asked to contribute subsequent ideas and sentences. As an English teacher, I love getting embroiled in debate about the semantic meaning of one individual word choice over another.
3. Peer Response Partners (or 'think-pair-share')
This style of peer feedback is well trodden and nothing new, but it is worth reflecting that it is the aggregation of understanding provided by learning in groups which provides the positive impact inherent in collaborative learning. Some people complain about the aggregation of misunderstanding that can occur in group work; however, that 'failure' isn't necessarily negative at all, for it gives the teacher the chance to modify the misapprehensions in whole class feedback, indeed, it opens up new avenues of learning - coming back to the contingent nature of learning! The 'think-pair-share' approach has been elaborated upon better than I could possibly explain - so here is a useful blog on the activity and its importance from @headguruteacher:
http://headguruteacher.com/2012/07/17/the-washing-hands-of-learning-think-pair-share/.
I would add that it is crucial that success criteria is shared with students and that they have a rigorous structure for feedback.
4. Critique
Once more, it is Ron Berger I have to thank for this. Put simply, it is a systematic approach to peer feedback that is structured, clearly and positively, depersonalising the feedback, whilst honing in upon the steps required to improve towards excellence. A fuller explanation can be found here by the venerable @DKMead: http://pedagogicalpurposes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/by-josie-and-emily.html.
5. 1-to-1 Teacher Feedback
This is as old school as ancient Athens I know! Yet, in the hurly burly of thirty GCSE students rumbling along in unison, the prospect of one-to-one feedback appears slim to non-existent far too often. Yet, we all know the power of the swiftest of one-to-one oral interventions. Too often our elegant written commentaries are ignored or simply misunderstood. We need to talk it through. With our KS3 groupings in our English and Media Faculty we have allocated one-to-one weeks for each class each term. We are going to ensure students work with peers collaboratively 'marking' prep books for SPaG in their preparatory writing, before undertaking independent reading and writing challenges. Every student will spend five minutes with their teacher reflecting upon their progress, targets and their finished, or ongoing, work. At GCSE, you may find that mock feedback would be doubly useful given an oral one-to-one to supplement a written commentary. How about setting up a small group task where students devise their own exam questions and answers - a higher order thinking task that requires some scaffolding support, but which is a tried and tested success - whilst undertaking that crucial one-to-one feedback.
6. Opinion Lines
A lively debate can ensue from this kinaesthetic strategy. Select topic sentences that convey a clear opinion and then use both sides of the room as an opinion continuum, from ' Strongly Agree' to ' Strongly Disagree '. This is an ideal task at the beginning of a topic, to determine their understanding, or at the end - perhaps it is a good way to book end learning to identify changing opinions after a topic has been studied. Students must orally feedback their opinions, justifying their ideas with evidence, building upon or challenging feedback from other students. The feedback can be made visible by a student scribing the continuum on the board in note form (photograph it and save it for later, or use it for ideas for a subsequent written activity).
7. The Secret Teacher ('The Power of the Post It')
First, the 'secret teacher' aspect comes in when you have students work independently, for example, on a piece of writing (for me it was students working on Recreative writing in preparation for a controlled assessment). Students were asked to note any questions on a post it and place it on the 'questions wall', as they worked away. This small step was helpful in eliminating those helpless and distracting questions, like 'How do I spell such and such...', when a dictionary is in a box in front of them! The freedom from answering these questions meant my teaching assistant and I could go around quickly giving feedback with limited interference, whilst casting surreptitious glances upon the work students were doing. Rather than interrupt the flow of the whole group by stopping to talk with individuals (students, like adults, are inherently nosy!), we simply made a note on a post it and placed it on the desk of the student - from a simple 'Proof read your punctuation' to 'Should you develop your scene direction further?' These little nudges actually moved away from the notion of oral feedback explicitly, but the nudge and modify approach is exactly in tune with the notion of oral formative feedback.
8. TSSSTSSS
This simply strategy relates to the method of questioning to elicit oral feedback. The 'Teacher-student-student...' approach explicitly rejects the 'tennis style' teacher led questioning, to instead encourage students to feedback upon the ideas of one another - bouncing ideas around the room like a basketball team (without the heavy ball obviously!). It is a timely reminder to ensure students still own their learning, building upon the ideas of one another.

9. ABC feedback:

Closely related to the previous point is the very simple model for students to respond to one another: A = Agree with... B = Build upon... C = Challenge. When students know this structure it is a finely tuned short-hand for effective collaborative learning that enriches the quality of feedback. The teacher is the ultimate guide, but students can develop their thinking more independently. This style does work better with a meaty topic where students are grappling with an argument, or questions, that requires higher order thinking. It also helps if students are given notice that they will respond, as it ensures they listen ever more keenly.

10. 'Learning Spies' Feedback:

Taken from the eponymous @LearningSpy himself, David Didau, this strategy works great for group work where you want students to remain on task purposefully throughout the lesson. It is a great way to celebrate and feedback upon positive learning, making explicit what good learning looks like, sounds like and feels like. I used this strategy a lot in the last couple of years with eager Year 7s, who were energised by the opportunity to seize some teacherly control! By making explicit before the task what behaviours you expect of good group work, the two 'spies' (I found a gender and ability mix for the pairing worked well), would note each group at work; making notes about skilful contributions, good leadership, levels of engagement and active listening. At the end of the lesson, they would feedback with real skill about the learning habits displayed by the group, identifying the best insights and behaviours on show. Try it with one of your most 'challenging' students - we all know the type - it really gets them reflecting and can be very powerful way to get your group learning about how to learn. Admittedly, it isn't something I would use daily, but with complex group work of some extended length, it is a great strategy.

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Oral Formative Feedback - Top 10 Strategies

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Quite simply, effective teaching hinges on oral formative feedback and questioning on a lesson by lesson basis. It appears to me that the greatest benefit of experience that I observe in excellent teachers is the recognition of how and when to elicit feedback, with the nuanced understanding of what questions to ask, how and when.

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Getting learners to engage with feedback

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Getting learners to engage with feedback

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We'll be honest, though: across many of these interventions, the empirical evidence of effectiveness was underwhelming. That's not to say the interventions were useless, necessarily. But rather, it was just so rare that many of the great ideas had been examined more than once, to provide any kind of converging evidence. And even when they had, a vast portion of the evidence came from questionnaires or focus groups of students, rather than from directly observing or measuring their behavior. As a result, the literature tells us a great deal about what learners think helps them to engage with feedback, but relatively little about what objectively does help.

Taking a step back from specific interventions and the evidence of their effectiveness, we began to think about a more fundamental question: Why should any intervention work? In other words, which learning skills should our interventions enhance, and how should this enhancement in turn affect students' engagement with feedback? We examined each intervention to find an explicit or implicit rationale for its use. We then gathered these rationales together, and looked for common themes. Four such themes emerged, which we have called the SAGE processes:

Each of these SAGE processes represents a broad set of (meta)cognitive skills underlying engagement with feedback that researchers have tried to target in their interventions. Our review helps to map how practitioner-researchers have tried to tackle each of them. By extracting these conceptual themes, we can also begin to think of our interventions in more strategic ways. We can see that no single intervention is likely to cover all of these bases: potentially a 'package' of interventions is what's needed. A teacher might, for example, use peer-assessment exercises as a means to promote students' assessment literacy skills, but might also need something else if part of the problem relates to their goal-setting and self-regulation skills. An effective solution to the problem of weak engagement with feedback may be one that, by combining several interventions, maps strongly onto all of the prerequisite skills.

In September, the UK's Higher Education Academy published our Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit (DEFT) (2). The DEFT is one such package of interventions (though by no means a perfect, comprehensive, or empirically validated one), which we developed in collaboration with students, taking inspiration from here and there as we conducted our systematic review. The teaching resources in the DEFT are designed to tackle some of the key barriers that our students tell us prevent them from using feedback. It includes a feedback guide that our students played a major role in producing; discussion topics and activities for inclusion within a "Using Feedback Effectively" workshop; and resources for compiling a feedback portfolio. All of the resources can be downloaded in an editable format so that individual teachers can selectively adapt any bits they see as potentially beneficial to their own students.

As we continue our search for effective interventions, an unexpected side-effect has become apparent: we are finding ourselves increasingly aware of our own aversive and defensive reactions when receiving critical feedback. Somehow this awareness feels valuable - by reflecting on the barriers that we put up in these situations, we might be better equipped to intervene when our students put up the same barriers (and indeed, better equipped to change our own behavior). Certainly there's more we could do to model for students the fact that defensive reactions to feedback are human rather than a sign of inadequacy and to provide springboards for discussing helpful and unhelpful responses. So maybe next time you receive infuriating feedback, you could try thinking of it as a "teachable moment."

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Do your students engage with your feedback comprehensively and with an open mind? Plenty of anecdotal and empirical evidence tells us that the answer might be "no." Indeed, our own students have openly told us that their strategies include hiding ...

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Highlights the "plus, minus, interesting" model for self-assessment.

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It's a universal process in education-so universal that we regularly fail to appreciate its complexity. Here's how it goes: (1) A teacher looks at a piece of student work; (2) The teacher writes something on the work (sometimes a grade, sometimes a score, sometimes a comment); and (3) Later, the student looks at what the teacher has written.

Of course, the idea is that what the teacher has written on the student's work improves the student's learning. But as many studies have shown, students often learn less when teachers provide feedback than they do when the teacher writes nothing (Kluger &amp; DeNisi, 1996). The apparently simple process of looking at student work and then giving useful feedback turns out to be much more difficult than most people imagine. We could make the whole process considerably more effective by understanding one central idea: The only important thing about feedback is what students do with it.

Keeping Purpose in Mind

In psychology and education, it is common to define feedback as any actions taken by an external agent to provide individuals with information regarding some aspect of their performance. At its simplest, therefore, feedback might identify the quality of the work, as happens when a typing teacher tells a student that his typing speed is 45 words per minute. More helpfully, the feedback might indicate the gap between the current performance and the desired performance-for example, by also telling the student that his target speed is 50 words per minute. More helpfully still, the teacher might tell the student that his typing speed will increase if he uses only his thumb to depress the space bar. In other words, the best feedback provides information not just about current performance, but also about how to improve future performance.

In the typing example above, and in most sports coaching, this point is obvious. When a coach gives a softball pitcher feedback on her pitching action, it's clear that the purpose of the feedback is to help the player improve her pitches. This is also true in many school subjects. For example, a visual arts teacher might give a student advice on how to develop a piece of sculpture or a painting, and a language arts teacher might give feedback on the draft of a story so the next draft is better.

In general, however (and this is what makes feedback so challenging), the main purpose of feedback is to improve the student's ability to perform tasks he or she has not yet attempted. If the language arts teacher advises the student that his story would be improved by swapping around the third and fourth paragraphs, the student can do this, but he will learn little. The intellectual heavy lifting has been done by the teacher, not the student. Similarly, if a math teacher corrects a student's arithmetic errors, there's nothing left for the student to do but note how many of her calculations were incorrect. It's easy to see why such forms of feedback are unlikely to be effective. And if we don't keep the purpose of feedback in mind, the same problems may also crop up in more subtle ways.

For example, many school districts allow students to revise assessed pieces of work and resubmit them for a higher grade after receiving feedback from teachers. Such a system can create incentives for students to turn in poor-quality work, wait for the teacher to tell them how to improve it, and then just follow the instructions. The feedback has improved the work, but the student has probably not learned much from the process.

The real issue is purpose. Why are we looking at student work in the first place? Sometimes we do want to focus on improving the existing work. For instance, when I'm reading a final thesis draft from one of my PhD students before it goes to the bookbinder, it would be rather perverse for me to just tell the student that I saw a typographical error in one of the equations on page 36. It's possible that the student would learn something by checking the equations on page 36 and locating the error herself, but given this particular context, it would be far more sensible for me to tell the student what the error was.

Most of the time, however, the student work we're looking at is not important in and of itself, but rather for what it can tell us about students-what they can do now, what they might be able to do in the future, or what they need to do next. Looking at student work is essentially an assessment process. We give our students tasks, and from their responses we draw conclusions about the students and their learning needs.

When we realize that most of the time the focus of feedback should be on changing the student rather than changing the work, we can give much more purposeful feedback. If our feedback doesn't change the student in some way, it has probably been a waste of time.

Giving Feedback They Can Use

There's an old joke about a driver lost in a remote region, trying to find a way to get to the city. Eventually, he asks a local about how to get there. The local replies, "Well, if I were you, I wouldn't start from here." It's a joke because we can see that this is not a particularly helpful thing to say. The driver has no other choice but to start from where he is.

Yet, we do this to our students all the time. We say things like, "You should be able to do this. You're in 5th grade"-which, when you think about it, is not helpful. The crucial insight here was captured by David Ausubel (1968) many years ago:

The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach ... accordingly. (p. vi)

In other words, we need to start from where the learner is, not where we would like the learner to be. We need to use the information we obtain from looking at the student's work-even through that information may be less than perfect-and give feedback that will move the student's learning forward. Here are a few suggestions about how teachers might do this.

Assign Tasks That Illuminate Students' Thinking

Sometimes, we just want to know whether students can do something. In such situations, it's perfectly appropriate to give them a task that simply tells us whether they can do it or not. However, most of the time, we want to know more than that. We want to know how we can help them get better, and this requires that we carefully design tasks to illuminate each student's thinking.

In language arts and social studies, most tasks are so open that we almost always learn something about a student's thinking by looking at his or her work. For example, even that traditional essay so hated by students returning from vacation, "What I did on my holidays," will provide insights into a student's writing capabilities. In social studies, in responding to a question such as "Why did the Union army want to capture Atlanta?" students are likely to reveal the extent of their understanding of Atlanta as a transportation and logistics hub. However, in math and science, looking at students' work often tells us only that they didn't do it very well and they need to do it again, but better. Designing tasks that, in Ritchhart and Perkins's (2008) phrase, "make thinking visible" takes time, but front-loading the work in this way makes it much more likely that we'll provide useful feedback.

For example, the question below probes students' understanding of the arithmetic mean of a set of numbers. However, rather than asking students to calculate the mean of a set of numbers, as most standardized tests do, the question explores whether the students really understand the concept of the mean:

What can you say about the means of the following two sets of numbers:

Many students choose option (c), which is, of course, incorrect. It takes authentic understanding of the definition of the mean to realize that there is no discretion about whether to count the zero. The only correct response is option (b).

Similarly, in science, the following question helps teachers figure out whether students understand the important distinction between climate change in general and the specific issues related to the depletion of the ozone layer through the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

What can we do to preserve the ozone layer?

What's particularly interesting about this question is that option (e) may look like a fifth option included just to increase the number of choices, but in fact it's the only correct response.

To be sure, no matter how carefully or deeply you probe, you can never make thinking wholly visible. Sometimes you're going to get it wrong. But at least by trying to get a handle on the student's thinking, you're giving yourself the chance to get it right more often than not. Major league hitters are happy getting things right three times out of ten. Don't beat yourself up.

Make Feedback into Detective Work

One way of making sure that students actively use feedback is to make responding to the feedback a task in itself. In other words, make feedback into detective work.

In a previous article in Educational Leadership (Wiliam, 2012), I mentioned Charlotte Kerrigan, a language arts teacher who sometimes responds to her students' essays by writing her comments on strips of paper. She then gives each group of four students their four essays, along with the four strips of paper. The group's task is to figure out which comments apply to which essays.

Or consider a math teacher who provides feedback on 20 solved equations. Rather than telling the student which equations are incorrect, the teacher can instead say, "Five of these are incorrect. Find them and fix them."

The same basic principle can be applied to any school subject. For example, in social studies, if a student has included the Emancipation Proclamation as one of the causes of the U.S. Civil War, instead of telling the student that the Proclamation was issued in the second year of the war, the teacher could point out that one of the causes he has mentioned can't be a cause because it occurred after the start of the war, and ask the student to sort this out.

Such practices ensure that students, the recipients of feedback, do as much work as the teacher who provides the feedback. Making feedback into detective work encourages students to look at the feedback more closely and to think about their original work more analytically.

Build Students' Capacity for Self-Assessment

The amount of feedback we can give our students is limited. In the longer term, the most productive strategy is to develop our students' ability to give themselves feedback. With adults, we do this intuitively. Whenever I observe a lesson by a student teacher, the first question the teacher asks me is, "How did I do?" My response-and the response of most administrators I know-is, "How do you think you did?" If the teacher knows what he or she did well and what still requires work, then my feedback is irrelevant. More important, teachers who can critique their own performance can improve when nobody is observing them.

In my work with music teachers, I've seen the importance of self-feedback. Instrumental music teachers commonly get only 20 to 30 minutes each week with a student. But these teachers realize that most of the progress a student makes in playing a musical instrument happens when the student practices at home. A student could improve his or her performance very little in 30 minutes a week. Therefore, many instrumental music teachers spend most of their instructional session ensuring that students have the skills to practice productively-which requires that students can evaluate how well they've performed and make adjustments accordingly. Contrast this approach with most content-area teaching in schools, where teachers seem to believe that students make most of their progress when the teacher is present, with homework as a kind of optional add-on.

It's important, therefore, to develop students' capacity for self-assessment. At the same time, we need to remember that it can be emotionally challenging to assess one's own work, Therefore, I recommend starting with samples of anonymous student work, and asking students to describe what feedback they would give the creator of the work. After that, students can move on to the work of actual peers, and finally, to self-assessment.

To start with, a simple approach, sometimes called "plus, minus, interesting," is all that is needed. At the end of a task, ask students to identify something they found easy about the task, something they found challenging or difficult, and something they found interesting. Such reflection develops language skills and helps the students become clear about what areas they need to work on.

With any task that has a qualitative element rather than just being correct or incorrect, students can be asked to identify what they would do differently if they did the task again. In science, for instance, students might be prompted to think about what they would change to improve a science experiment they conducted. In mathematics, students might be asked how they might report the result of a mathematical investigation differently. Sometimes it's appropriate to ask students to make the changes they have identified, such as redrafting a literary essay in language arts. Sometimes, however, it's useful to tell students in advance that they won't have to make the improvements they've identified, so they don't have an incentive to say that the work is fine as it is.

The purpose of this exercise is to develop the student's own critical eye. Once a student has that, feedback from others becomes less and less necessary.

A Trusting Relationship for Feedback

In the end, it all comes down to the relationship between the teacher and the student. To give effective feedback, the teacher needs to know the student-to understand what feedback the student needs right now. And to receive feedback in a meaningful way, the student needs to trust the teacher-to believe that the teacher knows what he or she is talking about and has the student's best interests at heart. Without this trust, the student is unlikely to invest the time and effort needed to absorb and use the feedback.

The only thing that matters is what the student does with the feedback. If the feedback you're giving your students is producing more of what you want, it's probably good feedback. But if your feedback is getting you less of what you want, it probably needs to change.

Finally, talk to your students. Ask them, "How are you using the feedback I'm giving to help you learn better?" If they can give you a good answer to that question, then your feedback is probably effective. And if they can't, ask them what they would find useful. After all, they're the clients.

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It's a universal process in education-so universal that we regularly fail to appreciate its complexity. Here's how it goes: (1) A teacher looks at a piece of student work; (2) The teacher writes something on the work (sometimes a grade, sometimes a score, sometimes a comment); and (3) Later, the student looks at what the teacher has written.

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Another interesting blog

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Recently I have been looking again at the issue of marking. It is a hugely important source of feedback provided that we keep the volume of marking in proportion to the level of impact it can have in improving learning outcomes. I've discussed this in a much-read earlier post: Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective, Reflective. At a whole school level at KEGS and in my own department, a key objective for the year is to devise approaches to marking that deliver maximum impact for all to see - that 'progress over time' issue. What does marking look like when it is clearly securing improvement and progress in learning?

To help with our search I was fortunate to be able to arrange a visit to the wonderful a thriving, dynamic school in NW Essex that recently received an astonishing OfSTED report: Outstanding in every detail. It is a school where teaching and learning and professional dialogue take centre stage and there is a palpable spirit of collaborative working. I'd heard they had an excellent 'whole school approach' to assessment and marking so I was delighted to be invited by the Headteacher, John Hartley, to attend a twilight CPD session preceded by an hour spent dropping in on a few lessons. He described the whole school approach to marking and feedback very simply: It is called Saffron Walden County High School, 'closing the gap'. All that is common is the concept; the theme; the mantra - that students need to close the gap between the work they have done originally and a higher level of work suggested by the feedback they receive. In other words, 'closing the gap' means 'acting on feedback'. The mechanism for doing this is open to interpretation. Sounds simple enough but it was hugely impressive to see in action.

On our walkabout I dropped in on a Y9 Art lesson where the GCSE course was starting; a couple of Y8 English lessons, a Y7 German lesson and a Y9 History lesson among others. The phrase 'close the gap' was being used liberally. In Art, students were closing the gap acting on the feedback written on post-its, both peer-marked and teacher marked; in English, students were re-drafting sections of their work, closing the gap by trying to build in the grammatical and stylistic content from their feedback. As a short-hand for the whole process of acting on feedback, closing the gap seemed well understood by the students.

The twilight CPD session revealed that this initiative was still being developed. The structure of the session was itself a model of exemplary staff CPD: one of several sessions running across the year that staff opt into from a menu of choices; food and drink provided beforehand, staff-led, small groups, interactive, mixing quality input with sharing and discussion - brilliant really. The core of the session was that five tables showcased the marking approaches used in a particular department; we then rotated around to talk to each subject specialist. Here the 'whole school approach' came clear. Far from being some kind of straight-jacket diktat, there was complete freedom to develop the 'closing the gap' concept and the methods were all very different. What they had in common was they focused on recording student responses to feedback; the gap-closing was as important as the marking.

In English, the teacher showed us an old exercise book - from a couple of years ago. Her marking was thorough - page after page of comment, later developing a www/ebi approach; comprehensive teacher feedback. But.... no student response. None - except the ephemeral hit and hope kind. In her current students' books the teacher comments were shorter and the students were obliged to respond straight away. This had crystallized mini dialogues in the books and there were re-drafted paragraphs emerging where the students had attempted to address the issues raised in their feedback straight away. Gaps were being closed. Comparing the two approaches, without any doubt, this new strong emphasis and insistence that comments must be acted upon was powerful.

Around the room, further examples followed. A grid system for Art recording teacher feedback and student action, A4 feedback sheets stuck in books in Science with a large box where students had to record their gap-closing work, Maths books where students were making attempts to identify and correct errors in response to teacher feedback, Humanities books where 6/8 mark answers had to be re-drafted taking account of teacher feedback on previous attempts; DT projects where feedback and self assessment were recorded and dated logging progress as the project proceeded through stages. In every case closing the gap appeared to be making an impact and the teachers all seemed to feel that it had helped them re-focus their marking so that comments were actionable and the overall volume realistic.

For sure, this approach makes the learning more visible to an external observer and we will be trying to emulate this approach in my own department at KEGS. Our book reviews have shown us that, without doubt, the most impressive marking is marking that has been acted upon. John and I agree that we'd rather see a few small steps of clear progress built on simple marking rather than screes of comments that students don't appear to have read!

Thanks to Polly Lankester, AHT at SWCHS, for organising the CPD and to John, Headteacher , for your hospitality. It was a wonderful afternoon.

UPDATE: Here is another great resource via SWCHS giving ideas for transferring responsibility to students as part of the closing the gap process. This comes via Nathan Cole - Deputy Head at the fabulous Wilson's School - and the Teaching and Learning team at Wilson's. Nathan was formerly a History teacher at Saffron Walden. I think this is genius.

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Recently I have been looking again at the issue of marking. It is a hugely important source of feedback provided that we keep the volume of marking in proportion to the level of impact it can have in improving learning outcomes. I've discussed this in a much-read earlier post: Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective,...

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An interesting and practical blog

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Does a steepling pile of marking like this loom large in your nightmares?
The effect of good quality written feedback is one of those few constants that most teachers can agree has a positive impact on our students' learning. With this universal truth acknowledged, we create assessment policies and armies of teachers scratch away in the books of their students, filling their waking hours with marking and feedback. Too often, our tough 9 to 5 is then followed by an evening stuffed with marking from 5 to 9. Is all this effort having the impact we desire? Is feedback indeed the gleaming holy grail of our practice it promises to be?

As an experienced teacher of over a decade, with some years in the bank as a subject leader of English who has conducted ample work scrutinies, I have seen my fair share of written feedback. I have seen teachers produce ample swathes of rich detail about what the student has done, and needs to do, in books and in folders. Spelling errors, praise, targets to improve. Time after time. Hour after hour of teacher time is ploughed into this worthy activity, but the issue is that too often the effort isn't matched by the impact on learning.

One flaw in the whole feedback edifice is that the onus is too often on the teacher and not the student. What is masquerading as formative assessment, to help enlighten our students on how to get better, is rather an attempt to prove we are doing our job for school leaders weilding stringent accountability measures, or under the shadow of the dreaded OFSTED visit. Whole school policies that demand weekly or fortnightly feedback for every student attempt to beat students over the head with self-improvement, regardless of the actual needs of the student (or the wellbeing of the teacher). As David Didau has explored, sometimes feedback shouldn't be given so that students improve (see David's excellent blog post 'Force-fed feedback - Is less More? '). Certainly, for feedback to be timely and purposeful, setting arbitrary weekly or fortnightly deadlines is frankly a dumb notion.

We need to reframe the flawed view of written feedback as something that should fill the time of teachers into something that should fill the time of our students. I have written before about DIRT (Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time) - see here. The kernel of genius in DIRT is something ultimately very simple. We need to give students lots of time to respond to feedback. We also need to put the onus on them to makes changes and to engage in a feedback dialogue. Of course, if that dialogue is verbal, in the thick of their learning, then all the better.

In short, they should spend more time responding to feedback than we spend writing the feedback. We need to be precise and give students actions to respond to their feedback. If their vocabulary in English lacks punch, then circle their weak modal verbs and adjectives (note the specificity of the feedback) and then get them to use more effective synonyms, using a thesaurus or other apt DIRT tools. Give them time to do it and make feedback something that genuinely feeds forward.

The concept of 'feeding forward' is so crucial. So what do I mean by 'feed forward'? If our feedback is a one off event that is never revisited then it is unlikely that the effort of giving the feedback will see the impact we desire on our students' learning.

There are some specific strategies that can minimise our time taken on feedback whilst making sure that we have the maximum impact. Here are some tried and tested - time saving - strategies for effective assessment for learning that encourage the notion of feeding forward, putting the onus on students to engage meaningfully with our efforts:

Use symbols rather than comments. If half the class has made the same error then you are wasting time writing out comments, as you will have to address this issue in lesson time. Instead, preempt common issues and skim over some work to decide upon some general codes. A , for example, can indicate that they lack evidence in an essay. It is a tiny time saver, but they all add up. Students are forced to interpret the symbols and really think about their feedback. Precious time is won.

Do a 'Dot Round'. Do some quick and quality feedback in class. As they are working independently circulate the room and check their work. If they have made any mistakes or have got an answer wrong then simply mark it with a dot. This helps direct them to make improvements and reflect upon their work - really engaging rather than passively receiving an answer.

Assess in colour. Another way to avoid lengthy comments and to encourage self-assessment and real reflection is to colour code feedback. For example, rather than the typical comment based feedback, simply code their work into red, amber and green. Put their best elements into green boxes and work they need to improve into red boxes etc. They can work out why in DIRT time and make appropriate improvements.

Self-assessment then teacher assessment. Students can complain about self-assessment. It is seen as some sort of teacher cheat. We need to explain why it has learning value, but also be clever about using it. By getting students to fully self-assess their work, using the assessment criteria (which they clearly understand from your scaffolding), with you then assessing their assessment, you can halve your job. Writing a short comment in response to their detailed summative comment can make for precise and effective feedback. If they fully understand the assessment, they are better placed to move forward with that knowledge.

One-to-one time in class. Written feedback is seen as the gold standard, but we should ensure that students understand that oral feedback is just as effective, if not more so. If you collect in a set of coursework for example, plan a lesson where students can work largely independently, allowing you to have one-to-one feedback sessions. Get them to make notes so that the details are recorded. With one-to-one feedback you can iron out the misunderstandings that sometimes attend written feedback and you can ensure that they are fully engaging with their instructions to feed forward.

There is a great deal more to be said about effective feedback, but my attempt to summarise would be thus:
Effective written feedback is timely and students are given ample time to take the feedback forward. It is an active process and it is an on-going dialogue in writing. Indeed - good oral feedback it just as effective, if not more so. The best feedback puts the onus on students and gives them precise guidance to act effectively, in the present and in future. Effective written feedback is revisited like a good friend who imparts sage advice. Related reading:
I have written extensively on written feedback, so take a look at my collection - see here.

Tom Sherrington has written an enduringly good post on feedback and 'closing the gap' - see here.

David Didau has written extensively on the topic of feedback, with a keen critical eye - see here.

Joe Kirby has written an excellent account of AfL that is really useful - see here.

Dan Brinton has written an excellent blog entitled 'fast feedback' which focuses upon time-effective feedback strategies - see here.

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Does a steepling pile of marking like this loom large in your nightmares? The effect of good quality written feedback is one of those few constants that most teachers can agree has a positive impact on our students' learning.

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Interesting read on the need to reduce feedback as a course progresses.

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The effects of feedback are more complex than we often realise. While expertise and mastery is unlikely to develop without feedback it's certainly not true to say that giving feedback results in expertise and mastery. There are few teachers who do not prioritise giving feedback and yet not all teachers' feedback is equally effective.

My understanding of the effects of feedback has grown as I've come to accept and internalise the profound differences between 'performance' and 'learning'. If you're not clear on these, I've summarised them here.

Hattie and Timperleypoint out that, "Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative." We know from Kluger & DeNisi's meta analysis that in 38% of the most robust studies they were able to find, giving feedback had a negative impact on outcomes. So what goes wrong?

It's interesting to consider the view from cognitive psychology. As Soderstrom and Bjorkpoint out, there is empirical evidence that "delaying, reducing, and summarizing feedback can be better for long-term learning than providing immediate, trial-by-trial feedback." Further, they point out that, "Numerous studies-some of them dating back decades-have shown that frequent and immediate feedback can, contrary to intuition, degrade learning."

This might seem on first reading to contradict your lived experience. After all, as every teacher knows, if you give students feedback on how to improve their tennis backhand, essay writing or the process by which to solve quadratic equations they will then make these improvements. There is no doubt whatsoever that giving feedback will improve students' performance but sadly this does not mean that these improvements will be retained or transferred. In fact, there's compelling evidence that giving students cues and prompts to improve performance in the short term actually reduces the likelihood of retention and transfer.

In the past I've used the analogy of navigation to explain this. Using a map is effortful and it's easier to memorise routes than to have to map read your way to every destination, especially if you intend to go there more than once. A SatNav, on the other hand, is the perfect machine for giving feedback: its GPS knows exactly where you are, you tell it exactly where you want to go and it provides immediate, trial-by-trial feedback on your progress. If you make a mistake it adapts and provides new instructions to compensate for the error. Navigation becomes effortless and memorising routes is hardly worth thetrouble.

When we compare this to the way feedback is given in schools it's no very great stretch to see how students might become dependent on their teachers for feedback. If teachers give too much feedback too quickly and don't encourage their students to struggle, ithardly surprising that students wouldavoid taking the trouble to memorise procedures and processes.

So, does this mean that the only feedback we should give is of the map reading variety? To answer this question we need to understand that feedback has two potential effects; it can promote learning and it can also promote confidence. The trouble is, these effects are often at odds. In order to promote learning feedback should induce struggle and be designed to get students to think hard about subject content, but to promote confidence it needs to be designed to encode success and give students the belief that they can successfully tackle a problem. If there is too much struggle involved in attempting a task we may end up encoding failure with the result that students might believe that they 'can't do maths' or that they're 'crap at French'.

My suggestion therefore is to adapt the type of feedback we give depending on where students are in their studies. If they're at the beginning of a course they will lack the knowledge to successfully perform a task without carefully scaffolded feedback. Being shown how to perform well and being given 'SatNav feedback' will help motivate them to see that they can be successful. However, such feedback is unlikely to promote learning. Therefore, as time goes by and students become increasingly confident, teachers ought to reduce the amount of feedback they give and raise their expectations of how much struggle students can reasonably cope with. At this stage, the most effective kind of feedback is of the 'map reading' variety. Having to struggle helps students recognise that it's worth the effort to memorise how to solve specific types of problems and to internalise certain procedures. Once these things have been internalised, students are no longer dependent on teachers' feedback and performance becomes increasingly effortless. By the time the end of a course is approached there should be little need for teachers to give feedback at all, as students ought to have learned everything they need to be successful.

This then is my suggestion for a feedback continuum. Lots of SatNav feedback at the beginning to promote confidence and encode success. Then we should increasingly reduce, delay and summarise feedback to promote the retention and transfer of the concepts and procedures we need students to master. The more effortful it is to follow feedback, the greater the likelihood that students will find ways to make do without it. Finally, as students have internalised what needs to be learned, teachers should see giving feedback as a last resort and as evidence that teaching has been ineffective.

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The feedback continuum: why reducing feedback helps students learn - David Didau: The Learning Spy

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The effects of feedback are more complex than we often realise. While expertise and mastery is unlikely to develop without feedback it's certainly not true to say that giving feedback results in expertise and mastery. There are few teachers who do not prioritise giving feedback and yet not all teachers' feedback is equally effective.

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Part of a longer blog at https://teacherhead.com/2012/11/10/mak-feedback-count-close-the-gap/?utm_content=buffere8f43&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer