Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Feedback: The School Administrators’ Perspective

• In Event: Issues of Writing in Assessment and Feedback

Abstract

A number of studies have examined differential feedback and its effects on student performance and personal characteristics (e.g., motivation, self-efficacy) (see Klueger and DeNisi, 1996). Studies on feedback show that detailed comments, specific to an individual’s work, are the most conducive approach to student improvement (see Lipnevich & Smith, 2008). Hattie and Timperley (2007), in their comprehensive review of different types of feedback, propose a model that identifies the particular properties and circumstances that make feedback effective (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). They separate feedback into four levels that vary in the degree of their usefulness. The researchers claim that feedback at the task level (related to specific attributes of a task) is most effective, with process-level feedback (related to the process of writing), self-regulation-level (related to meta-cognition) following it, and person-level feedback (mostly praise) being least effective in promoting improvement. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the viability of this typology.

When discussing issues of effectiveness of various kinds of feedback, researchers often think about the teacher side of it. An overworked teacher can hardly find the time to deliver extensive comments to all of his/her students. Hence, it is important to have school administrators who understand the importance of feedback and who have powers to create an environment that motivates teachers to use best assessment practices. In those cases, more teachers could deliver proper feedback to help their students. Currently, there is little research concerning administrators’ views on feedback.

Our study aims to merge the two goals: to explore the administrators’ perceived effectiveness of levels of feedback as proposed by Hattie’s and Timperley’s typology. We randomly assigned the participants (n = 50, 21% female, years of administrative experience ranging from 1 to 20+ years) to five feedback groups that were closely tied to the typology of feedback proposed by Hattie and Timperley (2007). We had task level, process-level, self-regulation level and person-level feedback, with the latter being broken into praise and criticism. The administrators were asked to read a student essay and then rate the effectiveness, helpfulness, student enjoyment and ease of administration of one of the five kinds of feedback that varied depending on the experimental condition. ANOVA was significant for the four outcome variables (p < .05). Post-hoc analyses revealed that school administrators rated task level feedback as most effective and helpful, followed by process-level and self-regulation feedback. Praise was rated as the least effective and helpful – all supporting Hattie and Timperley’s typology. Interestingly, criticism was rated as highly in terms of helpfulness and effectiveness as task-level feedback – a finding that is not consistent with Hattie and Timperley’s work. Further, school administrators believed that students would most enjoy praise (person-level) and least enjoy self-regulation-level feedback. Additional analyses and practical implications will be discussed.

Authors

• Anastasiya A. Lipnevich, Queens College - CUNY

• Jeffrey K. Smith, University of Otago