Feedback is meant to help students, but too often, it doesn’t. Students may not read it, may misunderstand it, or may not use it. If they clear each of these hurdles, they may still forget it by the next lesson. Meanwhile, giving feedback adds to our workload: it’s meant to be manageable, but too often, it isn’t.

Similarly, feedback is meant to help teachers. But too often, it doesn’t: too many issues are raised, goals are too vague, and there’s too little follow up. To make feedback useful, instructional coaching suggests we prioritise one small goal, practise it immediately, and return to it subsequently.

If teachers need focused feedback, surely students do too. Too often, my comments on students’ work were like an unhelpful observer’s to a teacher: I offered lots of information – but vague goals, and not enough support to achieve them. We can apply the principles of instructional coaching to student feedback: less is more; focus on one clear goal, help students achieve it. This post offers four reasons for giving focused feedback, then shows how we can focus our feedback better.

Four reasons to give less feedback

Focused feedback means suggesting just one improvement. I think it’s the right thing to do, for four reasons:

1) Focused feedback reduces cognitive load. People can only process a handful of ideas at once. By design, feedback is usually about the ideas students find most difficult. If we highlight multiple difficult ideas, students will struggle to make sense of them. Feedback is – in effect – new information for students to learn (Sadler, 2010): we wouldn’t introduce students to multiple new concepts in a couple of minutes’ teaching; we shouldn’t do so in feedback either. The fewer points we make, the more easily students can process, understand and recall them.

2) Focused feedback promotes behaviour change. What matters most is how students use feedback in future. Making a lasting change – forming a new habit – takes time, effort and support. Mustering these resources for multiple changes is almost impossible: if I give Alfie one target, he can practise now, and he and I may recall it next lesson; if I give him multiple targets, practice and recall get harder.

3) Focused feedback boosts confidence and self-efficacy. A list of problems feels overwhelming, a single change feels achievable. Helping students to make the change proves to them they can improve.

4) Focused feedback reduces workload. Feedback must be communicated somehow – most often in writing. As Joe Kirby has argued, marking is a hornet: most written comments influence one student, once (if you’re lucky). Whether we’re speaking or writing, the less feedback we offer, the quicker we can be. (Paradoxically, the more focused our feedback, the more frequently we can give it: we can even mark every book every lesson – if we want to.)

Focusing on just one improvement is a principle, not a rule. Some students may cope with two big points. We may mention another small but critical point (an error of fact, for example). We may highlight a couple of strengths too. But – in principle – less is more. Feedback should focus on a single, meaningful goal, and encourage students to act on it immediately.

What does focused feedback look like?

Imagine a typical page of student work: an essay, or a series of questions. We often fill the margins with comments, then write a summary at the end. We mention errors and omissions, highlight weaknesses in spelling and grammar, offer congratulations and encouragement, and suggest additions and refinements. For example, I might dot the following comments down the margins of an essay:

  • This explanation confuses King Charles’s religious belief and his financial problems.
  • Remember that the most significant checks on monarchical power came with the Glorious Revolution, subsequently.
  • You have covered the events of the 1640s well, but it would be helpful to provide more detail around each one.
  • You need to keep linking each point back to the underlying purpose.

Some students read such feedback, appreciate the significance of each point, act on them all, and remember them later. Not many though. It’s easy for a student to overlook some comments (perhaps the most important ones?). It’s hard for us to check. Exhaustive feedback offers information, explanations and suggestions – but in doing so, it robs students of clarity about what matters most, what to do next, and what to do in future.

(I think we give too much feedback because we feel responsible and accountable for catching every mistake. But feedback should improve the student, not the work (Wiliam, 2017). If students won’t act on or recall feedback, and if we won’t check it, is it worth giving it?)

Focused feedback encourages us to skip many of these messages – or rather – to synthesise them in a single priority. The comments I listed earlier all suggest that the student is struggling because their knowledge, or explanation, of 17th century events is weak. I can address this with a focused target:

  • A strong historical argument needs to support the claims being made by reference to what happened. Review your timeline of key events. Ensure you have included at least two sentences describing each and showing how it undermined monarchical power.

The underlying message is the same: students need to look back at Charles’s actions and checks on power. But the effect is different. Students now have a clear task. They can act on it immediately. I can check if they’ve done so. And they can use this feedback in future, because I’ve combined an immediate point with a wider principle (“a strong historical argument…”). (Students may need help to do this well. I can complement – or replace – this individual feedback with whole-class feedback, a review of a model answer, reteaching of tricky ideas, or whatever else will help.)

Similarly:

  • Instead of marking every question, we can comment on one crucial question (or one crucial error), asking the student to correct it.
  • Instead of assessing every paragraph, we can focus on one (or on one aspect of paragraph structure).
  • Instead of commenting on every technique used, we can highlight the strongest and weakest.

The formula for focused feedback is:

  1. Pick the most important thing students can improve.
  2. Give an immediate task that helps them act on the goal.
  3. Show how this improvement applies to future tasks.

Conclusion

We try to do too much with feedback: correcting errors, offering encouragement, suggesting improvements (and demonstrating we’re on top of things). This puts too much pressure on students (to make sense of our comments), on us (to write them) and on the feedback itself (to clarify complicated ideas). Less is more. Focused feedback – a single goal, an immediate task, and a lasting point – works better for us and for students. It’s hard to get feedback right. The less we give, the more focused our approach, the more likely it is that our feedback will help.

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References

Sadler, D.R. (2010). Beyond feedback: developing student capability in complex appraisal. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(5), pp.535-550.

Wiliam, D. (2017). Assessment, marking and feedback.  In Hendrick, C. and McPherson, R. (Eds.) What Does This Look Like in the Classroom? Bridging the gap between research and practice. John Catt.