Understanding the Emotional Dynamics of Feedback

• In Event: Exploring Links Between Instructional Feedback and Emotions

Abstract

One of the major breakthroughs in the field of assessment in the past two decades has been the discovery that student-involved classroom assessment including carefully crafted feedback can enhance students’ academic well-being. This presentation will review the international programs of research and development that provided the foundation for this discovery. In addition, it will outline the pathway from research directly into classrooms focusing on relations between feedback, emotions, and achievement.
Without question, the feedback we provide to students represents one of the most powerful teaching and learning tools we have at our disposal. Done well, it helps students zero in on the keys to the improvement of their performance. When we reflect on matters of effective feedback in the classroom, most often our attention is drawn to its formulation and delivery. If it’s formulated and given well, we tend to assume, it will serve its intended purpose. These are very important considerations. The criteria or characteristics by which we judge the quality of feedback from the teacher’s side of the information sharing equation have been clearly articulated and are addressed in professional literature.
However, in order to develop a comprehensive picture of the foundations of effective feedback we also have recently come to understand that we must explore feedback effectiveness from the student’s perspective. In doing so, we now we need to pay careful attention to the student’s frame of mind when they interact with the feedback and their mental state very often depends on their relationship with their teacher at the time information is shared. This presentation will explore the emotional dynamics of feedback from these points of view. The basic premise of this presentation is that feedback cannot serve its intended purpose unless and until the recipient understands the meaning of information provided, is confident (or open) enough to accept it, and is prepared to act on it productively.
In specific terms, the presenter will reveal why feedback in an “assessment for learning” environment must do far more than merely convey the results of an assessment, although that certainly is important. In addition, it must help students remain constantly in touch with their unique answers to the following three guiding questions:
• Where am I headed in my learning?
• Where am I now in relation to those expectations?
• How and I close the gap between those two?
Feedback leading to answers to each of these questions can come from teachers, classmates, personal reflection and ongoing assessment results. Students who remain constantly informed in these ways can remain confident learners. Their academic self-efficacy remains high, leaving them feeling in control of their own academic and personal well-being. They remain able to take the risk of trying to learn versus giving up on hopelessness. Further, international programs of research conducted over the past two decades have documented considerable achievement gains attributable to consisted applications of these feedback insights. These must be the emotional dynamics of assessment in classrooms designed to leave no child behind or in which every student succeeds—the current mission of American schools.

Authors

• Rick Stiggins, Michigan State University

• Jeffrey K. Smith, University of Otago