# data[].attributes.body
from Educational Leadership

# data[].attributes.headline
Chart Providing Class Feedback on Theme Paragraphs

# data[].attributes.subject
Chart Providing Class Feedback on Theme Paragraphs

# data[].attributes.body
This is a quick way to review student work and provide the class with strengths and next steps. Students can then determine what they will try out based on this.

# data[].attributes.headline
Summary Chart Capturing Students' Reflections on a Unit and Virtual School Experience

# data[].attributes.subject
Summary Chart Capturing Students' Reflections on a Unit and Virtual School Experience

# data[].attributes.body
A chart like this is a great way to SHOW students that their feedback to you matters!

# data[].attributes.headline
The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
, co-founder of Candor, Inc., has built her career around a simple goal: Creating bullshit-free zones where people love their work and working together. She first tried it at her own software startup. Then, as a long-time director at Google, she studied how the company's leaders created an environment where the joy that people took in their work felt almost tangible. As a faculty member at Apple University, Scott learned how Apple takes a different path but is equally committed to creating the conditions where people can do the best work of their careers and love doing it. Along the way, she managed a lot of teams in various states of euphoria and panic. And while she did a lot right, she'd be the first to admit everything she did wrong.

The good news is that Scott, now an acclaimed advisor for companies like Twitter, Shyp, Rolltape, and Qualtrics, has spent years distilling her experiences into some simple ideas you can use to help the people who work for you love their jobs and do great work. "At Google, I was really curious - did creating such a great work environment require having the world's greatest business model? The answer is no. Luckily, there are some things that any of us can do, even before the profits start rolling in."

The single most important thing a boss can do, Scott has learned, is focus on guidance: giving it, receiving it, and encouraging it. Guidance, which is fundamentally just praise and criticism, is usually called "feedback," but feedback is screechy and makes us want to put our hands over our ears. Guidance is something most of us long for.

At First Round's recent CEO Summit, Scott shared a simple tool for ensuring that your team gets the right kind of guidance - a tool she calls 'radical candor.'

To illustrate radical candor in action, Scott shared story about a time her boss criticized her. "I had just joined Google and gave a presentation to the founders and the CEO about how the AdSense business was doing. I walked in feeling a little nervous, but happily the business was on fire. When we told Larry, Sergey and Eric how many publishers we had added over the previous months, Eric almost fell off his chair and asked what resources they could give us to help continue this amazing success. So... I sort of felt like the meeting went okay."

But after the meeting, Scott's boss, Sheryl Sandberg, suggested they take a walk together. She talked about the things she'd liked about the presentation and how impressed she was with the success the team was having - yet Scott could feel a "but" coming. "Finally she said, 'But you said um a lot.' And I thought, 'Oh, no big deal. I know, I do that. But who cared if I said um when I had the tiger by the tail?'"

Sandberg pushed forward, asking whether Scott's ums were the result of nervousness. She even suggested that Google could hire a speaking coach to help. Still, Scott brushed off the concern; it didn't seem like an important issue. "Finally, Sheryl said, 'You know, Kim, I can tell I'm not really getting through to you. I'm going to have to be clearer here. When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid.'"

"Now, that got my attention!" Scott says.

For all of us raised in a culture that preaches, "If you can't say something nice...", that criticism might not sound so nice. But Scott knows now that it was the kindest thing Sandberg could have done for her. "If she hadn't said it just that way, I would've kept blowing her off. I wouldn't have addressed the problem. And what a silly thing to let trip you up." (Incidentally, she did work with that speaking coach, and kicked her um habit handily.) In the years since, Scott has worked to operationalize what it was that made Sandberg such a great boss.

It sounds so simple to say that bosses need to tell employees when they're screwing up. But it very rarely happens.

To help teach radical candor - this all-important but often neglected skill - to her own teams, Scott boiled it down to a simple framework: Picture a basic graph divided into four quadrants. If the vertical axis is caring personally and the horizontal axis is challenging directly, you want your feedback to fall in the upper right-hand quadrant. That's where radical candor lies.

"The vertical axis is what I call the 'give a damn' axis," Scott says. "Part of the reason Sheryl was able to say to me so bluntly, 'You sounded stupid,' was that I knew that she cared personally about me. She had done a thousand things that showed me that." From inviting recent New York transplant Scott to join her book group, to encouraging her to take time off to care for a sick relative, Sandberg didn't just invest in her professionally, but showed she truly cared about her. And she did that for everyone on her team. "Caring personally makes it much easier to do the next thing you have to do as a good boss, which is being willing to piss people off."

That's right, the horizontal axis is what Scott calls the "willing to piss people off" axis. Challenging others is difficult for many people; saying anything short of positive feels impolite. But once you become a boss, it's your job to do be equally clear about what's going wrong, and what's going right.

I would argue that criticizing your employees when they screw up is not just your job, it's actually your moral obligation.

" John Stuart Mill explains it very well. He said, 'The source of everything respectable in man, either as an intellectual or as a moral being, is that his errors are corrigible.' The whole strength and value of human judgment depends on the one property that it can be set right when it is wrong.' You have to tell people when you think they're wrong or their work isn't good enough," Scott says.

Radical candor, then, results from a combination of caring personally and challenging directly. But what does it look like in practice? Scott has created an acronym to help people remember:

HHIPP: "Radical candor is humble, it's helpful, it's immediate, it's in person - in private if it's criticism and in public if it's praise - and it doesn't personalize." That last Pmakes a key distinction: "My boss didn't say, 'You're stupid.' She said, 'You sounded stupid when you said u m. ' There's a big difference between the two."

If you think this all sounds like a lot of work, you're right. Radical candor requires you to undo the "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say it at all" training that's been beaten into your head since you learned how to talk. This is hard.

But if you're wondering whether it's worth it, you need only consider the alternatives - the other three quadrants of that graph.

If you can't offer radical candor, the second best thing you can do is be an asshole.

"Now, let me be totally clear. I hate working with jerks. You're not shooting for second best," Scott says. But when you challenge directly without caring personally, you fall into the quadrant that Scott calls obnoxious aggression. Which is bad, but better than not challenging directly.

She vividly remembers her own career's most memorable workplace jerk. He started out as obnoxiously aggressive - then things went from bad to worse. "He had an advisor who was trying to help him brush up his reputation. Unfortunately, this advisor didn't teach him to care personally and just advocated that he quit challenging people so directly." As a result, this jerk rolled over into the worst possible quadrant on the graph: manipulative insincerity.

"Rather than starting to care personally when he challenged us, he just quit challenging us. This was much worse. Rather than asking people what they thought about things and then yelling at them harshly when he disagreed, he started doing sneaky things," she says. "For example, he walked into a friend's office, hit the speaker phone button, and ordered him to call another colleague and ask her what she thought of him. 'But don't tell her I'm in the room,' he ordered." Scott couldn't believe it.

"Most of us left that kind of behavior behind in middle school. It's actually pretty rare. The vast majority of management mistakes happen in the quadrant that I call ruinous empathy," she says.

It's a quadrant she's spent some time in herself, leading to what she describes as the worst moment of her career.

"There was this guy who was working for me. We'll call him Bob. I really liked Bob. The problem was that Bob was absolutely terrible at his job," she says. Whenever Bob would express worries about his performance, Scott would try to reassure him. But after nearly a year, she realized that Bob's weak performance was impacting her whole team - and she was in danger of losing several top performers as a result. Trying to be "nice" to Bob, she'd been unfair to the people who were doing great work. And things didn't work out so well for Bob, either.

"Having never criticized Bob for 10 months because I was trying to spare his feelings, I was now sitting in front of Bob firing him. Not so nice after all," says Scott. "When I told him, Bob pushed his chair back, looked at me, and said, 'Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't anyone tell me?'"

Kim Scott speaking at First Round's recent CEO Summit.

Scott realized that she'd failed Bob and encouraged the rest of her team to fail him, too. "The kind of praise that I gave him was a fake-out, a bunch of false reassurances. I never asked Bob what he thought, because I had written him off, frankly. Worst of all, I had failed to create the kind of culture in which everyone in the company would tell Bob when he was going off the rails," she says. "Not to be mean, but to help him."

It was one of the biggest mistakes Scott made as a boss, and she quickly learned from it - for her own good, and to help spare future employees from the same painful situation. In the years since, she's mined her vast management experience for other valuable takeaways, and arrived at the four key things that any manager can do to create an environment of meaningful guidance:
Find opportunities for impromptu feedback.
Again, the goal with day-to-day guidance is to to push toward radical candor. Scott urges managers to go so far as to print out the quadrant system, post it near their desks, and explain what it means to their teams. "Get a couple of stickers, one color for praise and one color for criticism, and ask people to put stickers where they think your last interaction was on the graph," she says. "You'll be surprised how clear people will be with you about their reactions to the kind of guidance you're giving them."

Make backstabbing impossible.

"This is one of the most important things you can do to foster a culture of guidance between the people who work for you," says Scott. But that means more than squelching obviously political or passive aggressive behavior; bosses also need to avoid acting as well-meaning, but ultimately harmful go-betweens. Scott learned this one the hard way, too, trying to act as diplomat for two reports who couldn't get along.

By trying to play shuttle diplomacy, I created exactly the kind of toxic political environment that I was trying to avoid.

If she had it to do over, she would have insisted that these colleagues speak with each other directly about their conflict first - before involving her. Only if that route were exhausted would she have become involved, and then only with both parties present.

"I read about a leader who said he would always try to come up with the worst possible solution for both people when they came to him unable to resolve a disagreement. Because he didn't want to hear about it," Scott says. She encourages the opposite approach, though. "The problem is that if you don't genuinely try to come up with something that works for both people, then conflicts become too difficult to resolve in your organization, and people will avoid them. They won't challenge each other directly. Instead, you'll get a passive aggressive culture. So try to make a good faith effort to help people find a solution, and find it quickly."
Make it easier to speak truth to power.
"If you're a manager of managers, you need to make sure that everyone on your team feels they can criticize their boss," Scott says. But she's quick to note that this does not mean encouraging your team to be boss killers. Instead, she recommends putting this advice into practice with a simple meeting - commonly called a 'skip-level meeting,' though that sounds hierarchical, so she prefers to call them ' manager guidance sessions.'

The process is straightforward: First, let your managers know that you'll be scheduling a meeting with their direct reports. Get them comfortable with the idea, and make it clear that this meeting is intended to be helpful to them. Then explain the process to the reports, again making it clear that the goal of the meeting is to help their boss be a better manager - and that the meeting is not for attribution.

"In other words, I would tell the m anager what everybody said b ut not who said it. Not because I wanted to foster secrecy, but because I wanted to help get the information out there," says Scott. "If there were too many things the team didn't feel comfortable saying directly to their boss, and if it wasn't getting better over time, that became the top thing I worked with the manager to change."

When it comes to the nuts and bolts of the meeting, Scott has two key recommendations: Take the notes yourself - don't farm that task out - and send them to the manager in question as soon as the meeting is over. "Taking notes yourself is a very important way to show people that you're listening, and to get corrections. And I would tell people that at the end of this meeting, I was going to share the document. We're not going to have time to go back and edit, because we're all too busy. That had a way of focusing the conversation."

To prevent the meeting from devolving into a gripe session, force the team to prioritize issues. "I would say, 'Changing behavior is hard; you can't ask your boss to get a personality transplant as a result of one 45-minute meeting. What are the one or two things you want your boss to do differently?'" says Scott.

Then, arm ed with that s hort wish list, talk with the manager in question. Now it's the boss's turn to be specific about concrete ways that they can address the team's concerns. Make sure the boss doesn't just communicate the action plan to the team, but over-communicates it. Then, follow up to make sure the boss actually does what he or she promised to do.

"These meetings are a way of avoiding the situation where stuff is happening down in your organization that makes your skin crawl when it comes to light," Scott says. "You wonder, 'How could this have happened? Why didn't I know about it?' You want to learn about those things in a way that supports both the managers who are working for you and the people who are working for them."
Put your own oxygen mask on first.
There's a reason you hear this every time you board a plane - it's good advice. "You can't possibly give a damn about other people if you don't give a damn about yourself. At one point, when I was having a very stressful period in my career, I realized that the most important thing I could do for my team was not hire great people. It was not to raise a lot of money. It was actually to take a run every morning," Scott says.

She got pretty religious about it, running around the reservoir near her New York apartment every morning. Then one day, during a particularly difficult time at work, there was a big storm, lightning, hail and all. She thought about bailing, but quickly reconsidered and laced up her shoes. Scott had learned to take her commitments to herself as seriously as any other professional responsibility.

"There were usually hundreds of people running around the reservoir, but there was just one other nut out there that morning. As I got closer to him, I realized it was my co-founder," she says. "A lot of things were going wrong, but we were doing something right."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Radical Candor - The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
co-founder of Candor, Inc., has built her career around a simple goal: Creating bullshit-free zones where people love their work and working together. She first tried it at her own software startup. Then, as a long-time director at Google, she studied how the company's leaders created an environment where the joy that people took in their work felt almost tangible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brutal Honesty And Radical Candor: 6 Ways You’re Getting Radical Candor Wrong And 5 Ways To Get It Right | Radical Candor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Radical Candor is not the same as brutal honesty or front-stabbing and it’s not a license to be a jerk. It means Caring Personally and Challenging Directly.

# data[].attributes.headline
Feedback is Crucial to Success in School Systems

# data[].attributes.subject
Feedback is Crucial to Success in School Systems

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I remember the day quite clearly: the door to my portable classroom opened and my principal walked in. My heart skipped a beat - it was my first year teaching and the first time any school leader had come into my room. I was immediately worried about the clipboard in her hand and the uncapped pen. I was convinced that whatever I was doing would be wrong, that the moment would be off, that my students unengaged or the lesson would go off the rails. I was nervous about receiving feedback, but I now know that I needed it.

She smiled and it made me gulp; she wasn't a smiler by nature so I expected the worst. She walked toward me slowly and with great surprise I noticed the evaluation form attached to the clipboard had already been completed. "Sign here," she said, not noticing my confusion. I scanned the form and noticed I had mostly good marks; marks and ratings I knew were fictional, since it had been filled out before she had even come in to observe me. I signed it. I sighed. I didn't feel any better.

That experience was typical in my school, and not receiving feedback made it hard for any of us to learn. I spent my entire first year teaching with minimal feedback and as a result I had little insight into how to improve my teaching practice. The importance of feedback in school systems is undisputed. John Hattie's research on the topic for over a decade, and particularly his idea that it not just how you give it, but how feedback is received that matters, has shaped the experiences of students and of teachers.

Author Paul Bambrick-Santoyo talks about how to move from the scoreboard approach of teacher evaluation to an observation and feedback one, where the goal is for observers to give feedback that helps teachers improve versus simply pitting them against each other. The way feedback is delivered, and the type of feedback given, matters a lot if you want to drive to stronger student outcomes.

Feedback is no less important, nor is it less difficult, in organizations outside of the education space. It turns out it is hard to do it well, and very easy to do it poorly. If the feedback is not given in a way that is constructive, and not delivered in a way that the person receiving it feels open and cared for, it is likely to be ineffective at best, and harmful at worst. Which is perhaps why the ideas behind Radical Candor resonated with me so strongly, and why I see so much potential for applying them within school systems.

When I first heard Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity speak, I was sitting in an event held at AltSchools, surrounded by the leaders of other start-ups in and out of the edtech space. The people in the room had so many questions (which I appreciated) and so much skepticism around whether these concepts would actually work for them (which I found hard to understand). It took some explaining and lots of stories to get everyone on board but honestly, it all just clicked for me when she spoke.

All the helpful feedback I had received came flooding back, as well as the times it was less helpful. I immediately thought of the manager who gave a me a book with tabs in it for the pages he wanted me to focus on and a note that I was doing a great job on a project but that he knew I had the potential to be an even stronger leader. That felt a bit alarming at first (I needed to read a whole book?) and then terrific as I reflected later because he cared enough to make me better.

I was able to easily think of the people I had coached and supported by being in that upper right quadrant, as well as examples of time when I didn't care enough, or when I took caring to mean I should not be critical or constructive. And most of the room got there; most of the room believed we should all strive for Radical Candor - it's just everyone was wondering how. And I imagine you might be too. So here are four ways to bring more Radical Candor to your school system.
1. If You Are A Teacher
There are two great opportunities here for you. The first is maybe obvious - give good feedback to your students, show them you care for them by getting to know them, help them grow by challenging them and providing them with concrete ideas about areas to improve. For example, change "Rewrite this paragraph" to "In previous paragraphs you do an excellent job at providing examples to your reader whereas here you don't offer enough examples to help the reader understand your argument. Try again and then see me." The second is the feedback you give to other teachers. Step one is taking the time to observe your peers. Step two is giving them real actual feedback that they can make actionable. Just saying "good job" doesn't help anyone get better.
2. If You Are A Coach
You have opportunities with your teachers nearly every day. You see a lot of them so remember to take the time to get to know them - understand their strengths, challenges and what makes them tick before you jump in with feedback. You have a great chance with principals and district leaders too. Help them understand what is happening in classrooms and don't be afraid to challenge them to make improvements.
3. If You Are A Principal
As a leader, your job is to give and receive feedback. In order to do this effectively you must be clear that you are open to receiving feedback before giving it. Build strong relationships with your teachers by coming in to observe but also through interactions in your office, the teachers' lounge etc. Take the time to show them that you Care Personally. You want to remove the fear teachers have about you coming in and get them to a place when they can't wait for you to come because when you do they know they will learn something too. Remember to leave a positive note behind or send one later, but don't stop there. Take the time to also reflect on opportunities for improvement for each teacher and share those too.
4. If You Are A District Leader Or Superintendent
Start by remembering that many teachers and principals can't even imagine what your daily job and how your days look different from theirs. Help them understand some of the big picture things you are thinking about and how those impact the schools and students. Investing in not only asking them about themselves, but also telling them about you, helps show them that you Care Personally about them as human beings. Take time to listen to them too, before you provide feedback. You may find yourselves observing people you don't know well, sometimes about content you're not familiar with. Asking questions is a great way to show you care.
The Bottom Line
Overall, no matter who you are, you need to be the change you want to see. There are some easy steps you can take to make this more of a habit in your organization. Before you start giving feedback, show that you are interested in receiving it. Ask others for feedback and make sure they give it to you. Use questions like "Is there anything I can do or not do to make it easier for us to work together?" And then, after you "get it" you can start to "give it."

Start with the positive first but don't forget the honesty too. Now that the feedback is flowing, encourage it by praising it. Call people out for being good at getting and giving. Radical Candor may be tricky at first but it pays off in dividends. While receiving feedback made me nervous in my early days of teaching, what concerns me now is the lack of it. When we get feedback we grow. And if we want to be the best we can be for our students, we all need to keep growing.
Amy Jenkins is the chief operating officer of Education Elements. Following a meandering path of teaching in Oakland, running an after-school program, working at NewSchools Venture Fund and being a strategy consultant she is thrilled to now focus on supporting districts to in their efforts to become more dynamic, responsive and outcomes-oriented. Amy splits her time at work between coaching district leaders and ensuring the health and happiness of everyone at Education Elements through creating an environment where everyone can thrive and grow. On the weekends she can be found chasing her kids around.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feedback Is Crucial To Success In School Systems

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I remember the day quite clearly: the door to my portable classroom opened and my principal walked in. My heart skipped a beat - it was my first year teaching and the first time any school leader had come into my room. I was immediately worried about the clipboard in her hand and the uncapped pen.

# data[].attributes.body
Writing Samples for Trend Analysis

# 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?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feedback in the classroom by John Hattie and Greg Yates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Hattie and Greg Yates have co-authored another hands-on text about effective feedback in the classroom. Quick overview and free download.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Assessing Endings to Persuasive Essays in Order to Clarify Expectations and Inform Essay Revisions (5-8)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kaizena helps teacher provide fast, high-quality feedback on student work

# data[].attributes.headline
Screencastify for Recording Video Feedback

# data[].attributes.subject
Screencastify for Recording Video Feedback

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Screencastify is Chrome's simplest free screen recorder and video-creation platform, empowering anyone to become a better communicator by recording, editing, sharing, and assessing videos in seconds.

With Screencastify, use simple yet powerful screen recording tools to:

Record your desktop, browser tab, and/or webcam
Edit video from your browser
Share your video in multiple ways
Assess effectiveness with Interactive Questions and analytics
Request video submissions with Submit

Educators, professionals, and personal creators across the world use Screencastify screen recorder as a simple way to communicate more effectively through video.

🎬 Join a massive community of video creators
✔ Millions of weekly users
✔ Hundreds of millions of videos recorded
✔ Incredibly easy to learn and use

🎥 Create engaging videos with our easy-to-use screen recorder
▸ Record your browser tab, desktop, and/or your webcam
▸ Narrate with your microphone's audio
▸ Embed your webcam into the recording
▸ Annotate in real time to highlight key points

✂️ Simple video editing
▸ Trim the start and end of your videos
▸ Draw on your tab with the pen tool
▸ Merge, crop, and add text to videos

🚀 Share with your audience, wherever they are
▸ View and share videos on Google Drive
▸ Share to Google Classroom
▸ Export as MP4, animated GIF, or MP3
▸ See who has viewed your videos
▸ Add Interactive Questions to check viewer comprehension


👀Available free
▸ Create and store up to 10 videos free or upgrade for unlimited video creation
▸ Record and store videos up to 30 minutes for free

-------------------------------------------

How do people use Screencastify to communicate more effectively?

🎓 Education:
▸ Create instructional videos to engage your students whether they're university students or kindergarteners
▸ Create feedback videos to save time and increase your impact
▸ Embrace flipped classrooms or blended learning with video lessons
▸ Have your students practice foreign languages or public speaking
▸ Easily check for student comprehension with Interactive Questions

🏛️ At Work:
▸ Eliminate emails in favor of more effective, personalized communication
▸ Create performance review videos for coworkers
▸ Share engaging messages with your customers, users, and colleagues
▸ Create training and onboarding videos that captivate your employees
▸ Cancel meetings by sharing video instead

🌍 Everyday creators:
▸ With millions of weekly users, we've helped creators share countless ideas for videos to life - from professional YouTubers to personal trainers and attorneys to UFO hunters. What are you waiting for? Install Screencastify and inspire the world with your video communication.

-------------------------------------------

📝 Specs:
▸ Screencasts are captured as webm/vp8 files with ogg vorbis audio
▸ Videos can be saved to your local disk as various file types (GIF, MP4, etc), directly to your Google Drive, or you can simply share the link
▸ Screencastify screen recorder does not depend on any external software (like Java, Flash or other plugins) so it runs on Chrome OS, Chromebooks, and Chromeboxes
▸ Screen recording is a CPU intensive task. Older or weaker computers may lag if multiple programs and tabs are open at the same time as a screencast

📨 Info / Contact Us:
▸ Twitter:  @Screencastify
▸ Support Docs:  https://learn.screencastify.com
▸ Tech Support: support@screencastify.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The leading screen recorder for Chrome. Capture, edit and share videos in seconds.

# data[].attributes.body
I'll definitely be trying out the whole class feedback with the summary charts for specific tasks that students complete.

Thank you for the day! Such a productive learning day!

# data[].attributes.body
Clarifying questions were super helpful
Resources super helpful!
Listening to others in the group-super helpful!
A LOT of super helpful!! :)

# data[].attributes.body
Analyzing our own feedback and being culturally minded with it. This made me reflect on the times I have given feedback and may have not gotten across to students.
Summary charts are an excellent tool to have students reflect on their writing.
The three different lens you might what to focus on and the Who, What and When.
Also, how rubrics are kept for teachers because they are overwhelming for students and having students instead have checklists. (great tip)

# data[].attributes.body
Focusing on one element of writing at a time to make feedback quicker and more efficient.

# data[].attributes.body
Ideas on how to teach students to apply feedback once received.

# data[].attributes.body
Got: Summary charts, whole class feedback ideas

Wants: How to share feedback with parents and make them partners particularly at this secondary level.

# data[].attributes.body
Gots: Loved thinking about the "Who, What, How" of feedback. A crucial planning step that I don't often do. All good reminders / practices.
Want: Love the term "radical candor"; are there any tips for making this process quick & effective while giving feedback in rubrics?

# data[].attributes.body
Got: Summary charts, focusing on 1-2 lenses when giving feedback.

Wants: Help giving meaningful feedback for ELs about syntax.

# data[].attributes.headline
Explanation with Example Small Group Planning Steps

# data[].attributes.subject
Explanation with Example Small Group Planning Steps

# data[].attributes.headline
Inquiry Method Small Group Planning Steps

# data[].attributes.subject
Inquiry Method Small Group Planning Steps

# data[].attributes.headline
Stack of Synthesis Notes Related to Theme

# data[].attributes.subject
Stack of Synthesis Notes Related to Theme

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creating a Theme Progression - Google Jamboard

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The version of the browser you are using is no longer supported. Please upgrade to a supported browser. Dismiss

# data[].attributes.body
This is a great way to highlight student strengths AND create mentor examples for students by students.