# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
December 2007/January 2008 | Volume 65 | Number 4
Informative Assessment Pages 8-13

Carol Ann Tomlinson

When I was a young teacher-young both in years and in understanding of the profession I had entered-I nonetheless went about my work as though I comprehended its various elements. I immediately set out to arrange furniture, put up bulletin boards, make lesson plans, assign homework, give tests, compute grades, and distribute report cards as though I knew what I was doing.

I had not set out to be a teacher, and so I had not really studied education in any meaningful way. I had not student taught. Had I done those things, however, I am not convinced that my evolution as a teacher would have been remarkably different. In either case, my long apprenticeship as a student (Lortie, 1975) would likely have dominated any more recent knowledge I might have acquired about what it means to be a teacher. I simply "played school" in the same way that young children "play house"-by mimicking what we think the adults around us do.

The one element I knew I was unprepared to confront was classroom management. Consequently, that's the element that garnered most of my attention during my early teaching years. The element to which I gave least attention was assessment. In truth, I didn't even know the word assessment for a good number of years. I simply knew I was supposed to give tests and grades. I didn't much like tests in those years. It was difficult for me to move beyond their judgmental aspect. They made kids nervous. They made me nervous. With no understanding of the role of assessment in a dynamic and success-oriented classroom, I initially ignored assessment when I could and did it when I had to.

Now, more than three decades into the teaching career I never intended to have, it's difficult for me to remember exactly when I had the legion of insights that have contributed to my growth as an educator. I do know, however, that those insights are the milestones that mark my evolution from seeing teaching as a job to seeing teaching as a science-informed art that has become a passion.

Following are 10 understandings about classroom assessment that sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly illuminated my work. I am not finished with the insights yet because I am not finished with my work as a teacher or learner. I present the understandings in something like the order they unfolded in my thinking.

The formulation of one insight generally prepared the way for the next. Now, of course, they are seamless, interconnected, and interdependent. But they did not come to me that way. Over time and taken together, the understandings make me an advocate of informative assessment -a concept that initially played no conscious role in my work as a teacher.

Understanding 1: Informative assessment isn't just about tests.

Initially I thought about assessment as test giving. Over time, I became aware of students who did poorly on tests but who showed other evidence of learning. They solved problems well, contributed to discussions, generated rich ideas, drew sketches to illustrate, and role-played. When they wanted to communicate, they always found a way. I began to realize that when I gave students multiple ways to express learning or gave them a say in how they could show what they knew, more students were engaged. More to the point, more students were learning.

Although I still had a shallow sense of the possibilities of assessment, I did at least begin to try in multiple ways to let kids show what they knew. I used more authentic products as well as tests to gain a sense of student understanding. I began to realize that when one form of assessment was ineffective for a student, it did not necessarily indicate a lack of student success but could, in fact, represent a poor fit between the student and the method through which I was trying to make the student communicate. I studied students to see what forms of assessment worked for them and to be sure I never settled for a single assessment as an adequate representation of what a student knew.

Understanding 2: Informative assessment really isn't about the grade book.

At about the same time that Understanding 1 emerged in my thinking, I began to sense that filling a grade book was both less interesting and less useful than trying to figure out what individual students knew, understood, or could do. My thinking was shifting from assessment as judging students to assessment as guiding students. I was beginning to think about student accomplishment more than about student ranking (Wiggins, 1993).

Giving students feedback seemed to be more productive than giving them grades. If I carefully and consistently gave them feedback about their work, I felt more like a teacher than a warden. I felt more respectful of the students and their possibilities (Wiggins, 1993). I began to understand the difference between teaching for success and "gotcha" teaching and to sense the crucial role of informative assessment in the former.

Understanding 3: Informative assessment isn't always formal.

I also became conscious of the fact that some of the most valuable insights I gleaned about students came from moments or events that I'd never associated with assessment. When I read in a student's journal that his parents were divorcing, I understood why he was disengaged in class. I got a clear picture of one student's misunderstanding when I walked around as students worked and saw a diagram she made to represent how she understood the concept we were discussing. I could figure out how to help a student be more successful in small groups when I took the time to study systematically, but from a distance, what he did to make groups grow impatient with him.

Assessment, then, was more than "tests plus other formats." Informative assessment could occur any time I went in search of information about a student. In fact, it could occur when I was not actively searching but was merely conscious of what was happening around me.

I began to talk in more purposeful ways with students as they entered and left the classroom. I began to carry around a clipboard on which I took notes about students. I developed a filing system that enabled me to easily store and retrieve information about students as individuals and learners. I was more focused in moving around the room to spot-check student work in progress for particular proficiencies. I began to sense that virtually all student products and interactions can serve as informative assessment because I, as a teacher, have the power to use them that way.

Understanding 4: Informative assessment isn't separate from the curriculum.

Early in my teaching, I made lesson plans. Later on, I made unit plans. In neither time frame did I see assessment as a part of the curriculum design process. As is the case with many teachers, I planned what I would teach, taught it, and then created assessments. The assessments were largely derived from what had transpired during a segment of lessons and ultimately what had transpired during a unit of study. It was a while before I understood what Wiggins and McTighe (1998) call backward design.

That evolution came in three stages for me. First, I began to understand the imperative of laying out precisely what mattered most for students to know and be able to do-but also what they should understand-as a result of our work together. Then I began to discover that many of my lessons had been only loosely coupled to learning goals. I'd sometimes (often?) been teaching in response to what my students liked rather than in response to crucial learning goals. I understood the need to make certain that my teaching was a consistent match for what students needed to know, understand, and be able to do at the end of a unit. Finally, I began to realize that if I wanted to teach for success, my assessments had to be absolutely aligned with the knowledge, understanding, and skill I'd designated as essential learning outcomes. There was a glimmer of recognition in my work that assessment was a part of-not apart from-curriculum design.

Understanding 5: Informative assessment isn't about "after."

I came to understand that assessments that came at the end of a unit-although important manifestations of student knowledge, understanding, and skill-were less useful to me as a teacher than were assessments that occurred during a unit of study. By the time I gave and graded a final assessment, we were already moving on to a new topic or unit. There was only a limited amount I could do at that stage with information that revealed to me that some students fell short of mastering essential outcomes-or that others had likely been bored senseless by instruction that focused on outcomes they had mastered long before the unit had begun. When I studied student work in the course of a unit, however, I could do many things to support or extend student learning. I began to be a devotee of formative assessment, although I did not know that term for many years.

It took time before I understood the crucial role of preassessment or diagnostic assessment in teaching. Likely the insight was the product of the embarrassment of realizing that a student had no idea what I was talking about because he or she lacked vocabulary I assumed every 7th grader knew or of having a student answer a question in class early in a unit that made it clear he already knew more about the topic at hand than I was planning to teach. At that point, I began to check early in the year to see whether students could read the textbook, how well they could produce expository writing, what their spelling level was, and so on. I began systematically to use preassessments before a unit started to see where students stood in regard to prerequisite and upcoming knowledge, understanding, and skills.

Understanding 6: Informative assessment isn't an end in itself.

I slowly came to realize that the most useful assessment practices would shape how I taught. I began to explore and appreciate two potent principles of informative assessment. First, the greatest power of assessment information lies in its capacity to help me see how to be a better teacher. If I know what students are and are not grasping at a given moment in a sequence of study, I know how to plan our time better. I know when to reteach, when to move ahead, and when to explain or demonstrate something in another way. Informative assessment is not an end in itself, but the beginning of better instruction.

Understanding 7: Informative assessment isn't separate from instruction.

A second and related understanding hovered around my sense that assessment should teach me how to be a better teacher. Whether I liked it or not, informative assessment always demonstrated to me that my students' knowledge, understanding, and skill were emerging along different time continuums and at different depths. It became excruciatingly clear that my brilliant teaching was not equally brilliant for everyone in my classes. In other words, informative assessment helped me solidify a need for differentiation. As Lorna Earl (2003) notes, if teachers know a precise learning destination and consistently check to see where students are relative to that destination, differentiation isn't just an option; it's the logical next step in teaching. Informative assessment made it clear-at first, painfully so-that if I meant for every student to succeed, I was going to have to teach with both singular and group needs in mind.

Understanding 8: Informative assessment isn't just about student readiness.

Initially, my emergent sense of the power of assessment to improve my teaching focused on student readiness. At the time, I was teaching in a school with a bimodal population-lots of students were three or more years behind grade level or three or more years above grade level, with almost no students in between. Addressing that expansive gap in student readiness was a daily challenge. I was coming to realize the role of informative assessment in ensuring that students worked as often as possible at appropriate levels of challenge (Earl, 2003).

Only later was I aware of the potential role of assessment in determining what students cared about and how they learned. When I could attach what I was teaching to what students cared about, they learned more readily and more durably. When I could give them options about how to learn and express what they knew, learning improved. I realized I could pursue insights about student interests and preferred modes of learning, just as I had about their readiness needs.

I began to use surveys to determine student interests, hunt for clues about their individual and shared passions, and take notes on who learned better alone and who learned better in small groups. I began to ask students to write to me about which instructional approaches were working for them and which were not. I was coming to understand that learning is multidimensional and that assessment could help me understand learners as multidimensional as well.

Understanding 9: Informative assessment isn't just about finding weaknesses.

As my sense of the elasticity of assessment developed, so did my sense of the wisdom of using assessment to accentuate student positives rather than negatives. With readiness-based assessments, I had most often been on the hunt for what students didn't know, couldn't do, or didn't understand. Using assessment to focus on student interests and learning preferences illustrated for me the power of emphasizing what works for students.

When I saw "positive space" in students and reflected that to them, the results were stunningly different from when I reported on their "negative space." It gave students something to build on-a sense of possibility. I began to spend at least as much time gathering assessment information on what students could do as on what they couldn't. That, in turn, helped me develop a conviction that each student in my classes brought strengths to our work and that it was my job to bring those strengths to the surface so that all of us could benefit.

Understanding 10: Informative assessment isn't just for the teacher.

Up to this point, much of my thinking was about the teacher-about me, my class, my work, my growth. The first nine understandings about assessment were, in fact, crucial to my development. But it was the 10th understanding that revolutionized what happened in the classrooms I shared with my students. I finally began to grasp that teaching requires a plural pronoun. The best teaching is never so much about me as about us. I began to see my students as full partners in their success.

My sense of the role of assessment necessarily shifted. I was a better teacher-but more to the point, my students were better learners-when assessment helped all of us push learning forward (Earl, 2003). When students clearly understood our learning objectives, knew precisely what success would look like, understood how each assignment contributed to their success, could articulate the role of assessment in ensuring their success, and understood that their work correlated with their needs, they developed a sense of self-efficacy that was powerful in their lives as learners. Over time, as I developed, my students got better at self-monitoring, self-managing, and self-modifying (Costa & Kallick, 2004). They developed an internal locus of control that caused them to work hard rather than to rely on luck or the teacher's good will (Stiggins, 2000).

Assessing Wisely

Lorna Earl (2003) distinguishes between assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning. In many ways, my growth as a teacher slowly and imperfectly followed that progression. I began by seeing assessment as judging performance, then as informing teaching, and finally as informing learning. In reality, all those perspectives play a role in effective teaching. The key is where we place the emphasis.

Certainly a teacher and his or her students need to know who reaches (and exceeds) important learning targets-thus summative assessment, or assessment of learning, has a place in teaching. Robust learning generally requires robust teaching, and both diagnostic and formative assessments, or assessments for learning, are catalysts for better teaching. In the end, however, when assessment is seen as learning-for students as well as for teachers-it becomes most informative and generative for students and teachers alike.

References

Costa, A., & Kallick, B. (2004). Assessment strategies for self-directed learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Earl, L (2003). Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximize student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stiggins, R. (2000). Student-involved classroom assessment (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Wiggins, G. (1993). Assessing student performance: Exploring the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Carol Ann Tomlinson is Professor of Educational Leadership, Foundation, and Policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; cat3y@virginia.edu.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
December 2007/January 2008 | Volume 65 | Number 4 Informative Assessment Pages 8-13 Carol Ann Tomlinson When I was a young teacher-young both in years and in understanding of the profession I had entered-I nonetheless went about my work as though I comprehended its various elements.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
December 2007/January 2008 | Volume 65 | Number 4
Informative Assessment Pages 54-59

Susan M. Brookhart

From the student's point of view, the ideal "script" for formative assessment reads something like, "Here is how close you are to the knowledge or skills you are trying to develop, and here's what you need to do next." The feedback teachers give students is at the heart of that script. But feedback is only effective when it translates into a clear, positive message that students can hear.

Student Understanding and Control

The power of formative assessment lies in its double-barreled approach, addressing both cognitive and motivational factors. Good formative assessment gives students information they need to understand where they are in their learning (the cognitive factor) and develops students' feelings of control over their learning (the motivational factor).

Precisely because students' feelings of self-efficacy are involved, however, even well-intentioned feedback can be very destructive if the student reads the script in an unintended way ("See, I knew I was stupid!"). Research on feedback shows its Jekyll-and-Hyde character. Not all studies of feedback show positive effects; the nature of the communication matters a great deal.

Recently, researchers have tried to tease out what makes some feedback effective, some ineffective, and some downright harmful (Butler & Winne, 1995; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Other researchers have described the characteristics of effective feedback (Johnston, 2004; Tunstall & Gipps, 1996). From parsing this research and reflecting on my own experience as an educational consultant working with elementary and secondary teachers on assessment issues, particularly the difference between formative assessment and grading, I have identified what makes for powerful feedback-in terms of how teachers deliver it and the content it contains.

Good feedback contains information a student can use. That means, first, that the student has to be able to hear and understand it. A student can't hear something that's beyond his comprehension, nor can a student hear something if she's not listening or if she feels like it's useless to listen. The most useful feedback focuses on the qualities of student work or the processes or strategies used to do the work. Feedback that draws students' attention to their self-regulation strategies or their abilities as learners is potent if students hear it in a way that makes them realize they will get results by expending effort and attention.

Following are suggestions for the most effective ways to deliver feedback and the most effective content of feedback. Notice that all these suggestions are based on knowing your students well. There is no magic bullet that will be just right for all students at all times.

Effective Ways to Deliver Feedback

When to Give Feedback

If a student is studying facts or simple concepts-like basic math-he or she needs immediate information about whether an answer is right or wrong-such as the kind of feedback flash cards give. For learning targets that develop over time, like writing or problem solving, wait until you have observed patterns in student work that provide insights into how they are doing the work, which will help you make suggestions about next steps. A general principle for gauging the timing of feedback is to put yourself in the student's place. When would a student want to hear feedback? When he or she is still thinking about the work, of course. It's also a good idea to give feedback as often as is practical, especially for major assignments.

How Much Feedback?

Probably the hardest decision concerns the amount of feedback. A natural inclination is to want to "fix" everything you see. That's the teacher's-eye view, where the target is perfect achievement of all learning goals. Try to see things from the student's-eye view. On which aspects of the learning target has the student done good work? Which aspects of the learning goals need improvement and should be addressed next? Are any assignments coming up that would make it wiser to emphasize one point over another? Consider also students' developmental level.

What Mode Is Best?

Some kinds of assignments lend themselves better to written feedback (for example, reviewing written work); some to oral feedback (observing as students do math problems); and some to demonstrations (helping a kindergarten student hold a pencil correctly). Some of the best feedback results from conversations with the student. Peter Johnston's (2004) book Choice Words discusses how to ask questions that help students help you provide feedback. For example, rather than telling the student all the things you notice about his or her work, start by asking, "What are you noticing about this? Does anything surprise you?" or "Why did you decide to do it this way?"

You should also decide whether individual or group feedback is best. Individual feedback tells a student that you value his or her learning, whereas group feedback provides opportunities for wider reteaching. These choices are not mutually exclusive. For example, say many students used bland or vague terms in a writing assignment. You might choose to give the whole class feedback on their word choices, with examples of how to use precise or vivid words, and follow up with thought-provoking questions for individual students, such as, "What other words could you use instead of big?" or "How could you describe this event so someone else would see how terrible it was for you?"

The Best Content for Feedback

Composing feedback is a skill in itself. The choices you make on what you say to a student will, of course, have a big influence on how the student interprets your feedback. Again, the main principle is considering the student's perspective.

Focus on Work and Process

Effective feedback describes the student's work, comments on the process the student used to do the work, and makes specific suggestions for what to do next. General praise ("Good job!") or personal comments don't help. The student might be pleased you approve, but not sure what was good about the work, and so unable to replicate its quality. Process-focused comments, on the other hand, give suggestions that move the work closer to the target, such as, "Can you rewrite that sentence so it goes better with the one before it?"

Relate Feedback to the Goal

For feedback to drive the formative assessment cycle, it needs to describe where the student is in relation to the learning goal. In so doing, it helps each student decide what his or her next goal should be. Feedback that helps a student see his or her own progress gives you a chance to point out the processes or methods that successful students use. ("I see you checked your work this time. Your computations were all correct, too! See how well that works?") Self-referenced feedback about the work itself ("Did you notice you have all the names capitalized this time?") is helpful for struggling students, who need to understand that they can make progress as much as they need to understand how far they are from the ultimate goal.

Try for Description, Not Judgment

Certain students are less likely to pay attention to descriptive feedback if it is accompanied by a formal judgment, like a grade or an evaluative comment. Some students will even hear judgment where you intend description. Unsuccessful learners have sometimes been so frustrated by their school experiences that they might see every attempt to help them as just another declaration that they are "stupid." For these learners, point out improvements over their previous performance, even if those improvements don't amount to overall success on the assignment. Then select one or two small, doable next steps. After the next round of work, give the student feedback on his or her success with those steps, and so on.

Be Positive and Specific

Being positive doesn't mean being artificially happy or saying work is good when it isn't. It means describing how the strengths in a student's work match the criteria for good work and how they show what that student is learning. And it means choosing words that communicate respect for the student and the work. Your tone should indicate that you are making helpful suggestions and giving the student a chance to take the initiative. ("This paper needs more detail. You could add more explanation about the benefits of recycling, or you could add more description of what should be done in your neighborhood. Which suggestion do you plan to try first?") If feedback comes across as a lecture or suggestions come across as orders, students will not understand that they are in charge of their own learning.

Feedback should be specific enough that the student knows what to do next, but not so specific that you do the work. Identifying errors or types of errors is a good idea, but correcting every error doesn't leave the student anything to do.

These feedback principles apply to both simple and complex assignments, and to all subjects and grade levels. The following example of ineffective and, especially, effective feedback on a writing assignment reflects these principles in practice.

A Tale of Two Feedback Choices

As part of a unit on how to write effective paragraphs, a 4th grade teacher assigned her students to write a paragraph answering the question, "Do dogs or cats make better pets?" They were asked to have a clear topic sentence, a clear concluding sentence, and at least three supporting details. Figure 1 shows what a student named Anna wrote and what ineffective teacher feedback on Anna's paragraph might look like.

Figure 1. Ineffective Feedback on Anna's Writing Assignment

To provide feedback, this teacher decided to make written comments on each student's paper and return the papers to students the day after they turned them in. So far, so good. However, the feedback in Figure 1 is all about the mechanics of writing. This doesn't match the learning target for this assignment, which was to structure a paragraph to make a point and to have that point contained in a topic sentence. Because the mechanical corrections are the only comments, the message seems to be that Anna's next step is to fix those errors. However, this teacher has already fixed the errors for her. All Anna has to do is recopy this paragraph. Moreover, there is no guarantee she would understand why some words and punctuation marks were changed. Recopying by rote could result in a "perfect" paragraph with no learning involved!

The worst part about this feedback, however, is that it doesn't communicate to Anna that she did, in fact, demonstrate the main paragraphing skills that were the learning target. Anna successfully fashioned a topic sentence and a concluding sentence and provided supporting details. She needs to understand that she has accomplished this. Once she knows that, suggestions about how to make her good work even better make sense.

Figure 2 lists effective comments a teacher might write on Anna's paper or, preferably (because there is more to say than a teacher might want to write or a 4th grader might want to read), discuss with her in a brief conference. A teacher would probably use a few-but not all-of these comments, depending on circumstances.

Notice that these comments first compare the student's work with the criteria for the assignment, which were aligned with the learning goal. They acknowledge that Anna's paragraph shows that she understands how to produce a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding sentence.

The rest of the feedback choices depends on the context. How much time is available to discuss this paper? Which other feedback comments would align with learning targets that have previously been emphasized in class? Which of the possible next steps would be most beneficial for this particular student, given her previous writing? For example, if Anna is a successful writer who likes writing, she probably already knows that describing traits she has observed in her own dog was a good strategy. If she has previously been an unsuccessful writer but has produced a paragraph better than her usual work-because the assignment finally asked a question about which she has something to say-it would be worth communicating to her that you noticed and naming "write about what you know" as a good strategy for future writing.

Feedback Practice Makes Perfect

Feedback choices present themselves continually in teaching. You have opportunities to give feedback as you observe students do their work in class and again as you look at the finished work. Take as many opportunities as you can to give students positive messages about how they are doing relative to the learning targets and what might be useful to do next. Make as many opportunities as you can to talk with your students about their work. As you do, you will develop a repertoire of feedback strategies that work for your subject area and students. The main thing to keep in mind when using any strategy is how students will hear, feel, and understand the feedback.

References

Butler, D. L., & Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoretical synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 65, 245-281.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81-112.

Johnston, P. H. (2004). Choice words: How our language affects children's learning. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 254-284.

Tunstall, P., & Gipps, C. (1996). Teacher feedback to young children in formative assessment: A typology. British Educational Research Journal, 22, 389-404.

Susan M. Brookhart is an educational consultant and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the upcoming (Fall 2008) ASCD book, How to Give Good Feedback; susanbrookhart@bresnan.net.

KEYWORDS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
December 2007/January 2008 | Volume 65 | Number 4 Informative Assessment Pages 54-59 Susan M. Brookhart From the student's point of view, the ideal "script" for formative assessment reads something like, "Here is how close you are to the knowledge or skills you are trying to develop, and here's what you need to do next."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education
On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought's approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts.
Whether or not the feedback is just "there" to be grasped or offered by another person, all the examples highlight seven key characteristics of helpful feedback.

Helpful feedback is -

Though some of these traits have been noted by various researchers [for example, Marzano, Pickering & Pollock (2001) identify some of #3, #5, #1 and #4 in describing feedback as corrective, timely, specific to a criterion], it is only when we clearly distinguish the two meanings of "corrective" (i.e. feedback vs. advice) and use all seven that we get the most robust improvements and sort out Hattie's puzzle as to why some "feedback" works and other "feedback" doesn't. Let's look at each criterion in turn.

1. Goal-referenced. There is only feedback if a person has a goal, takes actions to achieve the goal, and gets goal-related information fed back. To talk of feedback, in other words, is to refer to some notable consequence of one's actions, in light of an intent. I told a joke - why? To make people laugh; I wrote the story - why? To paint vivid pictures and capture revealing feelings and dialogue for the reader to feel and see; I went up to bat - why? To get a hit. Any and all feedback refers to a purpose I am presumed to have. (Alas, too often, I am not clear on or attentive to my own goals - and I accordingly often get feedback on that disconnect.)

Given a desired outcome, feedback is what tells me if I should continue on or change course. If some joke or aspect of the writing isn't working - a revealing, non-judgmental phrase - I need to know. To that end, a former colleague of mine when I was a young teacher asked students every Friday to fill out a big index card with "what worked for you and didn't work for you this week." I once heard an exasperated NFL coach say in a post-game interview on the radio: "What do you think we do out here, wind a playbook up and pray all season? Coaching is about quick and effective adjustment in light of results!"

Note that goals (and the criteria for them) are often implicit in everyday situations. I don't typically announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh or that I wrote that short story as an exercise in irony. In adult professional and personal life, alas, goals and criteria for which we are accountable are sometimes unstated or unclear as well - leading to needlessly sub-par performance and confusing feedback. It can be extra challenging for students: many teachers do not routinely make the long-term goals of lessons and activities sufficiently clear. Better student achievement may thus depend not on more "teaching" or feedback only but constant reminders by teachers of the goal against which feedback is given: e.g. "Guys, the point here is to show, not tell in your writing: make the characters come alive in great detail! That's the key thing we'll be looking for in peer review and my feedback to you." (That's arguably the value of rubrics, but far too many rubrics are too vague to be of help.)

2. Transparent and tangible, value-neutral information about what happened. Therefore, any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but transparent and tangible results related to the goal. Feedback to students (and teachers!) needs to be as concrete and obvious as the laughter or its absence is to the comedian and the hit or miss is to the Little League batter. If your goal as a teacher is to "engage" learners as a teacher, then you must look for the most obvious signs of attention or inattention; if your goal as a student is to figure out the conditions under which plants best grow, then you must look closely at the results of a controlled experiment. We need to know the tangible consequences of our attempts, in the most concrete detail possible - goal-related facts from which we can learn. That's why samples or models of work are so useful to both students and teachers - more so than the (somewhat abstract) rubrics by themselves.

Even as little pre-school children, we learn from such results and models without adult intervention. That's how we learned to walk; that's how we finally learned to hold a spoon effectively; that's how we learned that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. Thus, the best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it. Video games are the purest example of such tangible feedback systems: for every action we take there is a tangible effect. We use that information to either stay on the same course or adjust course. The more information "fed back" to us, the more we can self-regulate, and self-adjust as needed. No "teaching" and no "advice" - just feedback! That's what the best concrete feedback does: it permits optimal self-regulation in a system with clear goals.

Far too much educational feedback is opaque, alas, as revealed in a true story told to me years ago by a young teacher. A student came up to her at year's end and said, "Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don't know what it means." "What's the word?" she asked. "Vag-oo," he said. (The word was "vague"!). Sad to say, too much teacher feedback is 'vagoo' - think of the English teacher code written in margins (AWK, Sent. Frag, etc.) Rarely does the student get information as tangible about how they are currently doing in light of a future goal as they get in video games. The notable exceptions: art, music, athletics, mock trial - in short, areas outside of core academics!

This transparency of feedback becomes notably paradoxical under a key circumstance: when the information is available to be obtained, but the performers do not obtain it - either because they don't look for it or because they are too busy performing to see it. We have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on "teaching" that they fail to notice that few students are attending or learning. Similarly in sports: the tennis player or batter is taking their "eye off the ball" (i.e. pulling their head out instead of keeping your head still as you swing), yet few novice players "see" that they are not really "seeing the ball." They often protest, in fact, when the feedback is given. The same thing happens with some domineering students in class discussion: they are so busy "discussing" that they fail to see their unhelpful effects on the discussion and on others who give up trying to participate.

That's why it is vital, at even the highest levels of performance, to get feedback from coaches (or other able observers) and/or video to help us perceive what we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, to learn to look for what is difficult but vital to perceive. That's why I would recommend that all teachers video their own classes at least once per month and do some walk-throughs and learning walks, to more fully appreciate how we sometimes have blind spots about what is and isn't happening as we teach.

It was a transformative experience for me when I did it 40 years ago (using a big Sony reel-to-reel deck before there were VHS cassettes!). What was clear to me as the teacher of the lesson in real time seemed downright confusing on tape - visible also in some quizzical looks of my students that I had missed in the moment. And, in terms of improving discussion or Socratic Seminar, video can be transformative: when students see snippets of tape of their prior discussions they are fascinated to study it and surprised by how much gets missed in the fast flow of conversation. (Coaches of all sports have done this for decades; why is it still so rare in classrooms?)

3. Actionable information. Thus, feedback is actionable information - data or facts that you can use to improve on your own since you likely missed something in the heat of the moment. No praise, no blame, no value judgment - helpful facts. I hear when they laugh and when they don't; I adjust my jokes accordingly. I see now that 8 students are off task as I teach, and take action immediately. I see my classmates roll their eyes as I speak - clearly signaling that they are unhappy with something I said or the way I said it. Feedback is that concrete, specific, useful. That is not to say that I know what the feedback means, i.e. why the effect happened or what I should do next (as in the eye rolling), merely that the feedback is clear and concrete. (That's why great performers aggressively look for and go after the meaning of feedback.)

Thus, "good job!" and "You did that wrong" and "B+" on a paper are not feedback at all. In no case do I know what you saw or what exactly I did or didn't do to warrant the comments. The responses are without any actionable information. Here is a question we can easily imagine learners asking themselves in response, to see this: Huh? What specifically should I do more of and less of next time, based on this information? No idea. The students don't know what was "good" or "wrong" about what they did.

Some readers may object that feedback is not so black and white, i.e. that we may disagree about what is there to be seen and/or that feedback carries with it a value judgment about good and bad performance. But the language in question is usually not about feedback (what happened) but about an (arguable) inference about what happened. Arguments are rarely about the results, in other words; they are typically about what the results mean.

For example, a supervisor of a teacher may make an unfortunate but common mistake of stating that "many students were bored" in class. No, that's a judgment, not a goal-based specific fact. It would have been far more useful and less debated had the supervisor said something like: "I counted inattentive behaviors lasting more than 5-10 seconds in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was well underway. The behaviors included 2 students texting under desks, 2 passing notes, and 7-8 students at any one time making eye contact with other students, etc.

However, when you moved to the small-group exercise using the 'mystery text', I saw such off-task behavior in only 1 student." These are goal-related factual statements, not judgments. Again, it doesn't mean that the supervisor is correct in the facts and it certainly doesn't mean they are anti-lecture; it only means that the supervisor tries to stick to facts and not jump to glib inferences - what is working and what isn't.

Such care in offering neutral goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what was perceived, in reference to shared goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class: Given your goals for the class, what would you like me to look for and perhaps count or code?

In my years of experience as a teacher of teachers, as an athletic coach, and as a teacher of adolescents I have always found such "pure" feedback to be accepted, not debated; and be welcomed (or at least not resisted). Performers are on the whole grateful for a 2 nd pair of eyes and ears, given our blind spots as we perform. But the legacy of so much heavy-handed inferencing and gratuitous advice by past coaches/teachers/supervisors has made many performers - including teachers - naturally wary or defensive.

What effective coaches also know is that actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn't work in complex performance situations. (That's why the phrase "corrective information" is not strictly-speaking accurate in describing all feedback.) Performers need feedback about what they did correctly because they don't always know what they did, particularly as novices. It is not uncommon in coaching, when the coach describes what a performer successfully did (e.g. "THAT time you kept your head still and followed all the way through!"), to hear the performer respond quizzically, "I did??"

Similarly the writer or teacher is sometimes surprised to learn that what she thought was unimportant in her presentation was key to audience understanding. Comedians, teachers, and artists don't often accurately predict which aspects of their work will achieve the best results, but they learn from the ones that do. That's why feedback can be called a reinforcement system: I learn by learning to do more of (and understand) what works and less of what doesn't.

4. User friendly. Feedback is thus not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it, even if it is accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders. Highly-technical feedback to a novice will seem odd, confusing, hard to decipher: describing the swing in baseball in terms of torque and other physics concepts to a 6-year-old will not likely yield a better hitter. On the other hand, generic 'vagoo' feedback is a contradiction in terms: I need to perceive the actionable, tangible details of what I did.

When I have watched expert coaches, they uniformly avoid either error of too much overly-technical information or of unspecific observations: they tell the performers one or two important things they noticed that, if they can be changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement ("I noticed you were moving this way..."), and they don't offer advice until they are convinced the performer sees what they saw (or at least grasps the importance of what they saw).

5. Timely. The sooner I get feedback, then, the better (in most cases). I don't want to wait hours or days to find out which jokes they laughed at or didn't, whether my students were attentive, or which part of my paper works and doesn't. My caveat - "in most cases" - is meant to cover situations such as playing a piano piece in recital: I don't want either my teacher or the audience to be barking out feedback as I perform. That's why it is more precise to say that good feedback is "timely" rather than "immediate."

A great problem in education, however, is the opposite. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance - think of writing and handing in papers and getting back results on standardized tests. If we truly realize how vital feedback is, we should be working overtime as educators to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it in class while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds. (Keep in mind: as we have said, feedback does not need to come from the students' teachers only or even people at all, before you say that this is impossible. This is a high-priority and solvable problem to address locally.)

6. Ongoing. It follows that the more I can get such timely feedback, in real time, before it is too late, the better my ultimate performance will be - especially on complex performance that can never be mastered in a short amount of time and on a few attempts. That's why we talk about powerful feedback "loops" in a sound learning system.

All adjustment en route depends upon feedback and multiple opportunities to use it. This is really what makes any assessment truly "formative" in education. The feedback is "formative" not merely because it precedes "summative" assessments but because the performer has many opportunities - if results are less than optimal - to adjust the performance to better achieve the goal. Many so-called formative assessments do not build in such feedback use.

If we truly understood how feedback works, we would make the student's use of feedback part of the assessment! It is telling that in the adult world I am often judged as a performer on my ability to adjust in light of feedback since no one can be perfect.

This is how all highly-successful computer games work, of course. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris you know that the key to the substantial improvement possible is that the feedback is not only timely but ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over - even, just where you left off - to give you another opportunity to get, receive and learn from the feedback before all is lost to forgetfulness. (Note, then, this additional aspect of user-friendly feedback: it suits our need, pace and ability to process information; games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing ability to assimilate information.

Do you see a vital but counter-intuitive implication from the power of many 'loops' of feedback? We can teach less, provide more feedback, and cause greater learning than if we just teach. Educational research supports this view even if as "teachers" we flinch instinctively at this idea.. That is why the typical lecture-driven course is so ineffective: the more we keep talking, the less we know what is being grasped and attended to. That is why the work of Eric Mazur at Harvard - in which he hardly lectures at all to his 200 students but instead gives them problems to solve and discuss, and then shows their results on screen before and after discussion using LRS 'clickers' - is so noteworthy. His students get "less" lecturing" but outperform their peers not only on typical tests of physics but especially on tests of misconceptions in physics. [Mazur (1998)]

7. Consistent. For feedback to be useful it has to be consistent. Clearly, I can only monitor and adjust successfully if the information fed back to me is stable, unvarying in its accuracy, and trustworthy. In education this has a clear consequence: teachers have to be on the same page about what is quality work and what to say when the work is and is not up to standard. That can only come from teachers constantly looking at student work together, becoming more consistent (i.e. achieving inter-rater reliability) over time, and formalizing their judgments in highly-descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained the same way we train teachers to be consistent, using the same exemplars and rubrics.
References
Bransford et al (2001) How People Learn. National Academy Press.

Clarke, Shirley (2001) Unlocking Formative Assessment: Practical Strategies for Enhancing Pupils' Learning in the Primary Classroom. Hodder Murray.

Dweck, Carol (2007) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Ballantine.

Gilbert, Thomas (1978) Human Competence. McGraw Hill.

Harvard Business School Press, Giving Feedback (2006)

Hattie, John (2008) Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Routledge.

James, William (1899/1958) Talks to Teachers. W W Norton.

Marzano, R ; Pickering, D & Pollock J (2001) Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, ASCD.

Mazur, Eric (1996) Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. Benjamin Cummings.

Nater, Sven & Gallimore R (2005) You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices. Fitness Info Tech.

Pollock, Jane (2012) Feedback: the hinge that joins teaching and learning, Corwin Press.

Wiggins, Grant (2010) "Time to Stop Bashing the Tests," Educational Leadership March 2010 | Volume 67 | Number 6

Wiggins, Grant (1998) Educative Assessment, Jossey-Bass.

[4] James, William (1899/1958), p. 41.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Key Characteristics Of Better Learning Feedback

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought's approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Classroom Data to Give Systematic Feedback to Students to Improve Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Effective feedback is a great way for teachers to use collected data in order to improve student learning. Unfortunately, feedback opportunities are scarce in most classrooms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
May 2007 | Volume 64 | Number 8
Educating the Whole Child Pages 22-26

Rick Stiggins

Historically, a major role of assessment has been to detect and highlight differences in student learning in order to rank students according to their achievement. Such assessment experiences have produced winners and losers. Some students succeed early and build on winning streaks to learn more as they grow; others fail early and often, falling farther and farther behind.

As we all know, the mission of schools has changed. Today's schools are less focused on merely sorting students and more focused on helping all students succeed in meeting standards. This evolution in the mission of schools means that we can't let students who have not yet met standards fall into losing streaks, succumb to hopelessness, and stop trying.

Our evolving mission compels us to embrace a new vision of assessment that can tap the wellspring of confidence, motivation, and learning potential that resides within every student. First, we need to tune in to the emotional dynamics of the assessment experience from the point of view of students-both assessment winners and assessment losers. These two groups experience assessment practices in vastly different ways, as shown in "The Assessment Experience," p. 24. To enable all students to experience the productive emotional dynamics of winning, we need to move from exclusive reliance on assessments that verify learning to the use of assessments that support learning-that is, assessments for learning.

Assessment for Learning

Assessment for learning turns day-to-day assessment into a teaching and learning process that enhances (instead of merely monitoring) student learning. Extensive research conducted around the world shows that by consistently applying the principles of assessment for learning, we can produce impressive gains in student achievement, especially for struggling learners (Black & Wiliam, 1998).

Assessment for learning begins when teachers share achievement targets with students, presenting those expectations in student-friendly language accompanied by examples of exemplary student work. Then, frequent self-assessments provide students (and teachers) with continual access to descriptive feedback in amounts they can manage effectively without being overwhelmed. Thus, students can chart their trajectory toward the transparent achievement targets their teachers have established.

The students' role is to strive to understand what success looks like, to use feedback from each assessment to discover where they are now in relation to where they want to be, and to determine how to do better the next time. As students become increasingly proficient, they learn to generate their own descriptive feedback and set goals for what comes next on their journey.

Teachers and students are partners in the assessment for learning process. For example, teachers might have students study samples of work that vary in quality and collaborate in creating their own student-friendly version of a performance assessment scoring rubric. Or students might create practice versions of multiple-choice tests that parallel the content of an upcoming final exam, which they can then use to analyze their own strengths and weaknesses and to focus their final preparation for that exam. Students can accumulate evidence of their learning in growth portfolios. They can also become partners with teachers in communicating about their own learning successes by leading their parent/teacher conferences.

Assessment for learning provides both students and teachers with understandable information in a form they can use immediately to improve performance. In this context, students become both self-assessors and consumers of assessment information. As they experience and understand their own improvement over time, learners begin to sense that success is within reach if they keep trying. This process can put them on a winning streak and keep them there.

When we use assessment for learning, assessment becomes far more than merely a one-time event stuck onto the end of an instructional unit. It becomes a series of interlaced experiences that enhance the learning process by keeping students confident and focused on their progress, even in the face of occasional setbacks.

The goal of assessment for learning is not to eliminate failure, but rather to keep failure from becoming chronic and thus inevitable in the mind of the learner. Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has pointed out that the key to winning is to avoid losing twice in a row (Kanter, 2004, p. 251). He meant that if you lose once and fix it, you can remain confident. Losing twice, though, can raise questions, crack that confidence, and make recovery more difficult. So when learners suffer a failure, we must get them back to success as quickly as possible to restore their confidence in their capabilities. This is the emotional dynamic of assessment for learning.

Scenario 1: Set Students Up for Success

Here is an example of the use of assessment for learning that builds student confidence from the start. Notice who develops and uses the assessment.

A high school English teacher assigns students to read three novels by the same author and develop a thesis statement about a common theme, consistent character development, or social commentary in the novels. They must then defend that thesis in a term paper with references. To set students up for success, the teacher begins by providing them with a sample of an outstanding paper to read and analyze. The next day, the class discusses what made the sample outstanding.

As their next assignment, the teacher gives students a sample paper of poor quality. Again, they analyze and evaluate its features in some detail. Comparing the two papers, students list essential differences. The class then uses this analysis to collaboratively decide on the keys to a high-quality paper.

After identifying and defining those keys, the students share in the process of transforming them into a rubric-a set of rating scales depicting a continuum of quality for each key. The teacher provides examples of student work to illustrate each level on the quality continuum.

Only after these specific understandings are in place do students draft their papers. Then they exchange drafts, analyzing and evaluating one another's work and providing descriptive feedback on how to improve it, always using the language of the rubric. If students want descriptive feedback from their teacher on any particular dimension of quality, they can request and will receive it. The paper is finished when the student says it is finished. In the end, not every paper is outstanding, but most are of high quality, and each student is confident of that fact before submitting his or her work for final evaluation and grading (Stiggins, in press; Scenario 1 adapted by permission).

Scenario 2: Help Students Turn Failure into Success

Here is an illustration of assessment for learning in mathematics used to help a struggling elementary student find the path to recovery from a chronic sense of failure. Notice how the teacher highlights the meaning of success and turns the responsibility over to the student. In addition, notice how the learner has already begun to internalize the keys to her own success.

Gail is a 5th grader who gets her math test back with "60 percent" marked at the top. She knows this means another F. So her losing streak continues, she thinks. She's ready to give up on ever connecting with math.

But then her teacher distributes another paper-a worksheet the students will use to learn from their performance on the math test. What's up with this? The worksheet has several columns. Column one lists the 20 test items by number. Column two lists what math proficiency each item tested. The teacher calls the class's attention to the next two columns: Right and Wrong. She asks the students to fill in those columns with checks for each item to indicate their performance on the test. Gail checks 12 right and 8 wrong.

The teacher then asks the students to evaluate as honestly as they can why they got each incorrect item wrong and to check column five if they made a simple mistake and column six if they really don't understand what went wrong. Gail discovers that four of her eight incorrect answers were caused by careless mistakes that she knows how to fix. But four were math problems she really doesn't understand how to solve.

Next, the teacher goes through the list of math concepts covered item by item, enabling Gail and her classmates to determine exactly what concepts they don't understand. Gail discovers that all four of her wrong answers that reflect a true lack of understanding arise from the same gap in her problem-solving ability: subtracting 3-digit numbers with regrouping. If she had just avoided those careless mistakes and had also overcome this one gap in understanding, she might have received 100 percent. Imagine that! If she could just do the test over . . .

She can. Because Gail's teacher has mapped out precisely what each item on the test measures, the teacher and students can work in partnership to group the students according to the math concepts they haven't yet mastered. The teacher then provides differentiated instruction to the groups focused on their conceptual misunderstandings. Together the class also plans strategies that everyone can use to avoid simple mistakes. When that work is complete, the teacher gives students a second form of the same math test. When Gail gets the test back with a grade of 100 percent, she jumps from her seat with arms held high. Her winning streak begins (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2004; Scenario 2 adapted by permission).

Redefining Our Assessment Future

We know how to deliver professional development that will give practitioners the tools and technologies they need to use assessment effectively in the service of student success. (Stiggins et al., 2004; Stiggins & Chappuis, 2006). Thus far, however, the immense potential of assessment for learning has gone largely untapped because we have failed to deliver the proper tools into the hands of teachers and school leaders. If we are to fulfill our mission of leaving no child behind, we must adjust our vision of excellence in assessment in at least two important ways that will help us balance assessment of and assessment for learning.

First, we must expand the criteria by which we evaluate the quality of our assessments at all levels and in all contexts. Traditionally, we have judged quality in terms of the attributes of the resulting scores; these scores must lead to valid and reliable inferences about student achievement. As a result, schools have lavished attention on characteristics of the instruments that produce such scores. In the future, however, we must recognize that assessment is about far more than the test score's dependability-it also must be about the score's effect on the learner. Even the most valid and reliable assessment cannot be regarded as high quality if it causes a student to give up.

We must begin to evaluate our assessments in terms of both the quality of the evidence they yield and the effect they have on future learning. High-quality assessments encourage further learning; low-quality assessments hinder learning. Understanding the emotional dynamics of the assessment experience from the student's perspective is crucial to the effective use of assessments to improve schools.

Second, we must abandon the limiting belief that adults represent the most important assessment consumers or data-based decision makers in schools. Students' thoughts and actions regarding assessment results are at least as important as those of adults. The students' emotional reaction to results will determine what they do in response. Whether their score is high or low, students respond productively when they say, "I understand. I know what to do next. I can handle this. I choose to keep trying." From here on, the result will be more learning. The counterproductive response is, "I don't know what this means. I have no idea what to do next. I'm probably too dumb to learn this anyway. I give up." Here, the learning stops.

In standards-driven schools, only one of these responses works, especially for students who have yet to meet standards. Assessment for learning is about eliciting that productive response to assessment results from students every time. It can produce winning streaks for all students.

References

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Educational Assessment: Principles, Policy, and Practice, 5(1), 7-74.

Kanter, R. M. (2004). Confidence: How winning streaks and losing streaks begin and end. New York: Crown Business.

Stiggins, R. J. (in press). Conquering the formative assessment frontier. In J. McMillan (Ed.), Formative assessment: Theory into practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Stiggins, R. J., Arter, J. A., Chappuis, J., & Chappuis, S. (2004). Classroom assessment FOR student learning: Doing it right-using it well. Portland, OR: ETS Assessment Training Institute.

Stiggins, R. J., & Chappuis, J. (2006). What a difference a word makes: Assessment FOR learning rather than assessment OF learning helps students succeed. Journal of Staff Development, 27(1), 10-14.

Rick Stiggins is Founder and Director of the ETS Assessment Training Institute, 317 SW Alder St., Suite 1200, Portland, OR, 97204; 800-480-3060; www.ets.org/ati.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
May 2007 | Volume 64 | Number 8 Educating the Whole Child Pages 22-26 Rick Stiggins Historically, a major role of assessment has been to detect and highlight differences in student learning in order to rank students according to their achievement. Such assessment experiences have produced winners and losers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Hattie, Visible Learning.  Pt 2: effective methods.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Hattie: Visible Learning Pt1.  Disasters and below average methods.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feedback and Revision :: The Key Components of Powerful Writing Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This short module examines the power of feedback and revision to facilitate learning. We will cover what feedback is (and isn't) and what makes for good revision (and what doesn't). We will also provide resources that can help you learn to become a better teacher of feedback and revision.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
21 components of effective feedback - Infographics | Talkdesk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn actionable tips on how to give constructive feedback, and how to give constructive feedback in a respectful way. Download our infographic today!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every human communication interaction, be it face-to-face, written, by telephone, or by other means, has three critical components: Sending Communication, Receiving Communication and Feedback.
The first component of communication is sending communications. Communication scholars refer to this as "encoding" a message; i.e., constructing and transmitting an understandable message to the receiver. There are seven keys to sending effective communications:

Think Results. As you create the message you need to transmit, ask yourself how this communication could potentially drive overall company goals. For example, you might need to address a particular employee on how to improve their customer service. Rather than focus your communication on their failures, effective front-line leaders focus the conversation on results. You would remind the employee how their actions drive company goals, and how their actions impact overall results.

Clear Purpose. Every message you send should have a clear purpose. For example, your outcome could be reaching a specific goal, solving a customer issue, giving information, seeking information, relationship building, etc.

Think Before You Speak. You may find this a bit elementary, but you would be amazed at how many well-meaning leaders engage their mouths before their brains. But if you prefer to shoot from the hip and just say what's on your mind without thinking, you will open yourself and your company to potentially damaging lawsuits and employee turnover.

Structure the Message for the Receiver. Since mutual understanding is our goal, then front-line leaders must create messages that resonate with their receivers (employees, colleagues, customers, suppliers). They cannot create messages that sound good to themselves. This may sound somewhat confusing, but consider that, too often, we spend more time thinking about what we want to say rather than thinking about what others need to hear. That is the difference.

Avoid Irrelevant Details. Do you know someone who, when telling a story or relating some information, includes so much irrelevant detail that you want to scream? To send effective messages, remember to focus only on the relevant information, data or contexts.

Read Reactions and Adjust. Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra is often credited for saying, "You can observe a lot just by watching." The same is true in communication. As you create and transmit your communication, watch for the reactions of your employees. Be prepared to read the reactions of your employees and adjust communication to reach intended results.

Focus on Results. Yes, I know this is a repeat, but this is the most important component of sending messages. Remember to always keep the results, the ultimate outcome of the communication, in your mind as you communicate with your employees, colleagues and senior managers.

Most leaders think they are great listeners. Yet in my 30-plus years of experience, be it in Fortune 500 boardrooms or at the frontline Mom and Pop shops, the leaders I have encountered, worked with or coached, are either average, or in reality, poor listeners. Without strong listening skills, you are doomed to be a very mediocre supervisor of a team with low morale and low productivity.

After sending the message and receiving a response, it is time to offer feedback to complete the communication process. Interestingly, feedback has two parts-giving and receiving. Sometime frontline leaders give feedback to employees, colleagues, vendors, customers and even bosses. Sometimes frontline leaders receive feedback from the same groups. Let's examine each part separately.

When giving feedback, consider these eight points:

1. Positive. Studies indicate that we hear "No" 4-7 times more than we hear "Yes." Even with our children, it is so much easier to catch them doing it wrong than to catch them doing it right. The same is true with our employees. I suggest you attempt a 3:1 ratio of positive-to-negative feedback.

2. Constructive. Destructive, mean-spirited, intimidating, or demeaning feedback destroys morale, team spirit and productivity. Moreover, it destroys your ability to effectively lead your team to achieve great results. In all cases, phrase your feedback so as to help the person-never to tear them down.

3. Focus on behavior-not personality. Even though you may think an employee is an unmitigated jerk, feedback should focus on their behaviors. Why? Because people can change behaviors-they can't change their personality.

4. Non-Judgmental. Suspend your internal judgments and focus only on the issue at hand. For example, you may not approve of a particular employee's hairdo, choice of jewelry, style of music or even lifestyle choice. These issues, and dozens more like them, seldom have any direct consequence on performance, and they should not have any direct impact on your feedback to them at work.

5. Clear. Frontline leaders need a crystal clear picture of what they are trying to accomplish with the feedback. Make sure you are clear on what you desire as the outcome of the feedback and be prepared to provide examples and backup.

6. Concise. Get to the point. Avoid needless rambling, injecting irrelevant information, or "dancing around" the issue. Be professional, courteous and concise in stating the feedback.

7. Specific. Avoid generalities like, "Sam, you need to do a better job." Ask yourself what specifically Sam needs to improve. The more specific the feedback, supported with quality and quality measures, the more effective the communication.

8. Follow with a Thank You! Why? First, it expresses your sincere appreciation (without sounding condescending) for the employee to really listen to your feedback. Second, it personalizes the relationship between you and your employee. Third, it demonstrates your honest, non-manipulative interest in improving their performance.

Similarly, think of these six points when receiving feedback:

1. Be open-minded. Even when you disagree or the feedback seems inaccurate, keep your mind open and your mouth shut. More often than not, the feedback you receive will indeed help you grow.

2. Consider all feedback as constructive. Effective frontline leaders assume all feedback, be it from employees, bosses, customers, or even spouses, to be something upon which they can improve. Approach all feedback with the mindset that what you are about to receive is constructive, not destructive.

3. Listen non-defensively. Top frontline leaders remind themselves that it is far more productive to achieving great results to listen non-defensively. They save their attacks for crushing the competition-not each other!

4. Restrain your tongue. How easy it is for us to immediately lash back at those who offer us well-meaning feedback. Bite your tongue-literally! Let the others speak without interrupting or defending.

5. Don't take anything said personally. When you receive feedback from your team, maintain a thick skin, and do not assume what you hear is an attack on you as a person, but frame the feedback into how you can become a better leader.

6. Say thank you. It takes a lot of guts, especially for your employees, to offer you feedback. Be thankful for it even if it hurts or does not add a lot of value to achieving great results. For by graciously accepting the feedback, you communicate to your team your willingness to listen, grow and build a solid team together.

Communication is a process of active two-way communication that results in mutual understanding. To achieve great results, frontline leaders must master three essential components of communication: sending communications, receiving communications and giving effective feedback. Patrick B. Ropella
Chairman & CEO, Ropella
Tel: (850) 983-4777
Web: www.Ropella.com
Patrick B. Ropella is Chairman & CEO of Ropella, the leading executive search and consulting firm specializing in the chemical and consumer products industries. Ropella grows great companies through executive search, leadership transformation and organizational improvement.

His new book, The Right Hire - How to Master the Art of SMART Talent Management, is available at www.Ropella.com/therighthire

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
These Key Components Lead To Effective Communication

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every human communication interaction, be it face-to-face, written, by telephone, or by other means, has three critical components: Sending Communication, Receiving Communication and Feedback. The first component of communication is sending communications. Communication scholars refer to this as "encoding" a message; i.e., constructing and transmitting an understandable message to the receiver.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Centre for Teaching and Learning - Western University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) supports Western University instructors in creating high quality student-centred learning experiences through orientation, training, mentorship, research, and innovation opportunities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Vol. 70

No. 1

Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?

You have 0 free articles left this month.

Create an account and get additional free articles.

Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement.

Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

The term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feedback, strictly speaking.

Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. I hit a tennis ball with the goal of keeping it in the court, and I see where it lands-in or out. I tell a joke with the goal of making people laugh, and I observe the audience's reaction-they laugh loudly or barely snicker. I teach a lesson with the goal of engaging students, and I see that some students have their eyes riveted on me while others are nodding off.

Here are some other examples of feedback:

A friend tells me, "You know, when you put it that way and speak in that softer tone of voice, it makes me feel better."

A reader comments on my short story, "The first few paragraphs kept my full attention. The scene painted was vivid and interesting. But then the dialogue became hard to follow; as a reader, I was confused about who was talking, and the sequence of actions was puzzling, so I became less engaged."

A baseball coach tells me, "Each time you swung and missed, you raised your head as you swung so you didn't really have your eye on the ball. On the one you hit hard, you kept your head down and saw the ball."

Note the difference between these three examples and the first three I cited-the tennis stroke, the joke, and the student responses to teaching. In the first group, I only had to take note of the tangible effect of my actions, keeping my goals in mind. No one volunteered feedback, but there was still plenty of feedback to get and use. The second group of examples all involved the deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by other people.

Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how "good" or "bad" my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is-advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn't do that would warrant such advice.

In all six cases, information was conveyed about the effects of my actions as related to a goal. The information did not include value judgments or recommendations on how to improve. (For examples of information that is often falsely viewed as feedback, see "Feedback vs. Advice" above and "Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades" on p. 15.)

Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Compare the typical lecture-driven course, which often produces less-than-optimal learning, with the peer instruction model developed by Eric Mazur (2009) at Harvard. He hardly lectures at all to his 200 introductory physics students; instead, he gives them problems to think about individually and then discuss in small groups. This system, he writes, "provides frequent and continuous feedback (to both the students and the instructor) about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed" (p. 51), producing gains in both conceptual understanding of the subject and problem-solving skills. Less "teaching," more feedback equals better results.

Feedback Essentials

Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.

1. Goal-Referenced

Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke-why? To make people laugh. I wrote a story to engage the reader with vivid language and believable dialogue that captures the characters' feelings. I went up to bat to get a hit. If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback (nor am I likely to achieve my goals).

Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course. If some joke or aspect of my writing isn't working -a revealing, nonjudgmental phrase-I need to know.

Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvious to everyone. I don't need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess. For example, a teacher might say,

The point of this writing task is for you to make readers laugh. So, when rereading your draft or getting feedback from peers, ask, How funny is this? Where might it be funnier?

As you prepare a table poster to display the findings of your science project, remember that the aim is to interest people in your work as well as to describe the facts you discovered through your experiment. Self-assess your work against those two criteria using these rubrics. The science fair judges will do likewise.

2. Tangible and Transparent

Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don't laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching.

Even as little children, we learn from such tangible feedback. That's how we learn to walk; to hold a spoon; and to understand that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. The best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it.

Alas, far too much instructional feedback is opaque, as revealed in a true story a teacher told me years ago. A student came up to her at year's end and said, "Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don't know what it means." "What's the word? " she asked. "Vag-oo," he said. (The word was vague!)

Sometimes, even when the information is tangible and transparent, the performers don't obtain it-either because they don't look for it or because they are too busy performing to focus on the effects. In sports, novice tennis players or batters often don't realize that they're taking their eyes off the ball; they often protest, in fact, when that feedback is given. (Constantly yelling "Keep your eye on the ball!" rarely works.) And we have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on "teaching" that they fail to notice that few students are listening or learning.

That's why, in addition to feedback from coaches or other able observers, video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape-captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.

3. Actionable

Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. Thus, "Good job!" and "You did that wrong" and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, What specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don't know what was "good" or "wrong" about what they did.

Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply presenting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that "many students were bored in class." That's a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, "I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student."

Such care in offering neutral, goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class, "What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?" In my experience as a teacher of teachers, I have always found such pure feedback to be accepted and welcomed. Effective coaches also know that in complex performance situations, actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn't work.

4. User-Friendly

Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproductive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.

Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement ("I was confused about who was talking in the dialogue you wrote in this paragraph"). They don't offer advice until they make sure the performer understands the importance of what they saw.

5. Timely

In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don't want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn't. I say "in most cases" to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don't want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I perform. That's why it is more precise to say that good feedback is "timely" rather than "immediate."

A great problem in education, however, is untimely feedback. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance-think of writing and handing in papers or getting back results on standardized tests. As educators, we should work overtime to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.

Before you say that this is impossible, remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher, or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool-part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it. Peer review is another strategy for managing the load to ensure lots of timely feedback; it's essential, however, to train students to do small-group peer review to high standards, without immature criticisms or unhelpful praise.

6. Ongoing

Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it. What makes any assessment in education formative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. In summative assessment, the feedback comes too late; the performance is over.

Thus, the more feedback I can receive in real time, the better my ultimate performance will be. This is how all highly successful computer games work. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris, you know that the key to substantial improvement is that the feedback is both timely and ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over-sometimes even right where you left off-to get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback. (This powerful feedback loop is also user-friendly. Games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing need, pace, and ability to process information.)

It is telling, too, that performers are often judged on their ability to adjust in light of feedback. The ability to quickly adapt one's performance is a mark of all great achievers and problem solvers in a wide array of fields. Or, as many little league coaches say, "The problem is not making errors; you will all miss many balls in the field, and that's part of learning. The problem is when you don't learn from the errors."

7. Consistent

To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.

Progress Toward a Goal

In light of these key characteristics of helpful feedback, how can schools most effectively use feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The key is to gear feedback to long-term goals.

Let's look at how this works in sports. My daughter runs the mile in track. At the end of each lap in races and practice races, the coaches yell out split times (the times for each lap) and bits of feedback ("You're not swinging your arms!" "You're on pace for 5:15"), followed by advice ("Pick it up-you need to take two seconds off this next lap to get in under 5:10!").

My daughter and her teammates are getting feedback (and advice) about how they are performing now compared with their final desired time. My daughter's goal is to run a 5:00 mile. She has already run 5:09. Her coach is telling her that at the pace she just ran in the first lap, she is unlikely even to meet her best time so far this season, never mind her long-term goal. Then, he tells her something descriptive about her current performance (she's not swinging her arms) and gives her a brief piece of concrete advice (take two seconds off the next lap) to make achievement of the goal more likely.

The ability to improve one's result depends on the ability to adjust one's pace in light of ongoing feedback that measures performance against a concrete, long-term goal. But this isn't what most school district "pacing guides" and grades on "formative" tests tell you. They yield a grade against recent objectives taught, not useful feedback against the final performance standards. Instead of informing teachers and students at an interim date whether they are on track to achieve a desired level of student performance by the end of the school year, the guide and the test grade just provide a schedule for the teacher to follow in delivering content and a grade on that content. It's as if at the end of the first lap of the mile race, My daughter's coach simply yelled out, " B+ on that lap!"

The advice for how to change this sad situation should be clear: Score student work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre-and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.

"But There's No Time!"

Although the universal teacher lament that there's no time for such feedback is understandable, remember that "no time to give and use feedback" actually means "no time to cause learning." As we have seen, research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning. And there are numerous ways-through technology, peers, and other teachers-that students can get the feedback they need.

So try it out. Less teaching, more feedback. Less feedback that comes only from you, and more tangible feedback designed into the performance itself. And, of course, send me some feedback on this article at gwiggins@authenticeducation.org.

Feedback vs. Advice

› You need more examples in your report.

› You might want to use a lighter baseball bat.

› You should have included some Essential Questions in your unit plan.

These three statements are not feedback; they're advice. Such advice out of the blue seems at best tangential and at worst unhelpful and annoying. Unless it is preceded by descriptive feedback, the natural response of the performer is to wonder, "Why are you suggesting this?"

As coaches, teachers, and parents, we too often jump right to advice without first ensuring that the learner has sought, grasped, and tentatively accepted the feedback on which the advice is based. By doing so, we often unwittingly end up unnerving learners. Students become increasingly insecure about their own judgment and dependent on the advice of experts-and therefore in a panic about what to do when varied advice comes from different people or no advice is available at all.

If your ratio of advice to feedback is too high, try asking the learner, "Given the feedback, do you have some ideas about how to improve?" This approach will build greater autonomy and confidence over the long haul. Once they are no longer rank novices, performers can often self-advise if asked to.

Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades

› This is a weak paper.

› You got a C on your presentation.

› I'm so pleased by your poster!

These comments make a value judgment. They rate, evaluate, praise, or criticize what was done. There is little or no feedback here-no actionable information about what occurred. As performers, we only know that someone else placed a high or low value on what we did.

How might we recast these comments to be useful feedback? Tip: Always add a mental colon after each statement of value. For example,

"Good work: Your use of words was more precise in this paper than in the last one, and I saw the scenes clearly in my mind's eye."

"This is a weak paper: Almost from the first sentence, I was confused as to your initial thesis and the evidence you provide for it. In the second paragraph you propose a different thesis, and in the third paragraph you don't offer evidence, just beliefs."

You'll soon find that you can drop the evaluative language; it serves no useful function.

The most ubiquitous form of evaluation, grading, is so much a part of the school landscape that we easily overlook its utter uselessness as actionable feedback. Grades are here to stay, no doubt-but that doesn't mean we should rely on them as a major source of feedback.

References

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.

Mazur, E. (2009, January 2). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50-51.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action.

We create practical, timely, affordable professional learning to help educators and instructional leaders provide students with a modern, equitable, and quality education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?