1. Feed-up: Before feedback can be given, students need to know the learning intention(s). Feed-up clarifies for the student Where am I going? What are the goals? This information sets the context for feedback.

2. Feedback: Feedback itself focuses on monitoring and assessing learning progression in relation to the learning intention or task. It is about How am I doing? What progress is being made towards the goals?

3. Feed-forward: This relates to the next steps required for improvement on a specific task or learning intention. It is about Where to next? What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress? Here the answer is likely to be directed to the refinement of goals, and seeking more challenging goals, because these are most likely to lead to greater achievement.

Effective feedback is when teachers and students address all three of these questions.

Three levels of feedback

Feedback operates on, or can be geared towards, three levels. These are:

1: Task-level (or product) feedback
Feedback aimed at the task or product describes students’ performance and may offer students directions on how to acquire more, different or correct information.
Example: “That is correct. Could you include more information about the Treaty of Versailles?”
Immediate feedback is likely to be most effective for task-level feedback.
Task-level feedback is not the most powerful kind. This is because feedback at the task level is not usually generalisable to other tasks. However, this level of feedback can be effective when the information it provides about the task is later used for improving strategies or self-regulation. For example, task-level feedback might help students to reject incorrect interpretations and provide directions for better ways to process and understand the material.
Too much feedback at the task level focused on the accuracy of responses, and not on the processing required for these responses, can direct students’ attention away from a higher-level understanding of their task performance, and focus them instead on a surface understanding of learning involving acquisition, storage and reproduction of knowledge.

2: Process-level feedback
Feedback aimed at the process of understanding focuses on how the student has completed a task or created a product.
Example: “You might find it easier to punctuate this page if you read it aloud with a peer.”
Process-level feedback is particularly powerful for improving students’ deep processing and mastery of tasks and directing students towards more effective task strategies. It provides a deeper understanding of learning, enabling students to appreciate relationships between strategies and performance, which helps them to transfer skills to more difficult or unfamiliar tasks.
Process-level feedback on metacognitive processes might focus on enhancing students’ self-efficacy, self-regulatory skills or confidence to engage further on a task.
Example: “You already know the key features for introducing an argument, check to see that you have incorporated them into your first paragraph.”
Feedback focused on cognitive or metacognitive processes is most effective when there is a delay between student performance and feedback, which enables better reflection.

3: Personal-level feedback
Feedback focused on the personal level is directed to the self and contains little task-related information.
Example: “That’s an intelligent response, well done.”
This is the least effective level of feedback as it rarely leads to more engagement, enhanced self-efficacy or better understanding of the task. In fact, praise often directs attention away from the task. When feedback draws attention to the self, students have a high fear of failure, and it becomes risky for students to tackle challenging tasks or to try hard. However, sometimes praise focused on the student’s effort, self-regulation and engagement can assist in enhancing self-efficacy and increase student motivation.
Summary: Feedback that is designed to move students from the task to the underlying processes or understandings and then to self-regulation is most effective. For example, feedback based at task performance can build students’ confidence and help them to feel more able to improve and experiment with strategy use. Then questioning and feedback can focus on learning strategies and metacognitive skills, which eventually help students to become self-regulating learners. These are the students that seek and give their own feedback!
How to improve feedback practices in your classroom