Understanding What Students Do with Feedback – Michelle Trim

“Improving our feedback based on an analysis of student outcomes (grades/ assessment) might include an assumption that all learning is already known and knowable by the teacher. This means that grades could be seen as proof that the intended parcel of knowledge was successfully acquired by the student. He/she followed feedback cues appropriately in order to assimilate the intended knowledge correctly, and that activity is reflected by student performances on tests or other metrics. This transmission idea doesn’t translate well to practice-based learning such as writing. It also does not allow for the surprises, the ways that student learning drives teacher learning in an ongoing, recursive process. In making space for recursivity, I wish to approach feedback situations as dialogic discussions, [which] means that the response of students to the feedback must be considered valuable to the extent of possibly re-shaping the original claim by the teacher. To be perceived as valuable, student responses need to be invited. This cannot happen if teachers are seen as the ultimate authorities. How can students see themselves in a dialogue if they view feedback as judgment rather than advice that they might not have to take exactly? Students may ignore feedback, but how often do they openly refute or engage with it? The point being that students might respond to feedback in the same way as any number of other one-way directives which claim to invite their participation, but don’t really mean it. Making ourselves clearer is not the same as making more space for student agency, and agency is required for deep learning to occur.”

Tags: feedback