Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning
Dasha Bunks
Liberty University
PSYC 775 - Teaching of Psychology
Dr. Winn
2022
Explanation
Student learning can be increased when students receive regular, specific, explanatory, and timely
feedback on their work. Feedback that is occasional and perfunctory (e.g., saying “good job”) is neither
clear nor explanatory and does not increase student motivation or understanding. Clear learning goals
help to increase the effectiveness of feedback to students because the comments can be directly tied to
the goals, and regular feedback prevents students from getting off track in their learning.
Relevance for Teachers
The feedback teachers’ offer can be most effective when it provides students with specific information
about their current state of knowledge and performance as related to learning goals. For example:
• Teachers can tell students what they are (or are not) understanding and the strength of their
performance by relating their progress to specific learning goals.
• Feedback can also incorporate information on what students can do in the future to achieve
those goals. For example, rather than general remarks, such as “good job” or “you do not appear
to be getting this,” teachers can make more directed comments, such as “Your topic sentences
provided a good summary of the main idea in each paragraph. In the future, you also need to
address the meaning of the text as a whole by generating and explaining a few points that take
into account how all the main ideas interact with one another.”
• Feedback on quizzes and practice tests is helpful to students and appears to improve classroom
performance in the future. Examples of such feedback include providing the correct response
when students answer incorrectly or, alternatively, providing guidance that helps students
discover the correct response themselves.
Providing feedback in a timely way (e.g., as quickly as possible after a quiz) assists learning and is usually
more effective than providing delayed feedback.
• The tone and targeting of feedback affect student motivation. Students tend to respond better if
feedback minimizes negativity and addresses significant aspects of their work and understanding,
in contrast to feedback that is negative in tone and focused excessively on details of student
performance that are less relevant to the learning goals.
• When students are learning a new task or struggling with an existing one, frequent praise
following small degrees of improvement is very important, and when progress is evident,
encouragement to persist can matter a great deal. Targeted feedback can also motivate students
to continue to practice learning a new skill.
Self-regulatory skills, which include attention, organization, self-control, planning, and memory
strategies, can facilitate mastery of the material to be learned. Although these skills may increase over
time, they are not subject only to maturation. These skills also can be taught or enhanced, specifically
through direct instruction, modeling, support, and classroom organization and structure.
Teachers can help students learn self-regulatory skills by introducing teaching strategies to enhance
attention, organization, self-control, planning, and remembering, all of which can greatly facilitate
learning. Moreover, the classroom environment itself can be organized to enhance self-regulation.
Organizational assistance can be provided in several ways:
• Teachers can present the goals of lessons and tasks very clearly to students.
• They can break down tasks into smaller, “bitesize,” meaningful components and clearly spell out
the criteria for successful task performance.
• Teachers also can provide time and opportunities for students to engage in practice.
• Some processing time and activity (e.g., summarizing, questioning, rehearsing, and practice) are
necessary for long-term remembering.
• Teachers can help students plan by helping them identify and evaluate the short- and long-term
consequences of their decisions.
• Teachers can use cues to alert students that important information is to follow when
introducing 6 a new concept to increase student attention.
Teachers can organize classroom time by incorporating periods of focused time, interactive periods, and
so forth, so students are able to practice intense focusing followed by more socially interactive methods
of learning.
References
Brookhart, S. M. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Ericsson, A. K., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition
of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363–406. doi.10.1037/0033-
295X.100.3.363
Gobet, F., & Campitelli, G. (2007). The role of domain-specific practice, handedness, and starting age in
chess. Developmental Psychology, 43, 159–172. doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.1.159
Leahy, S., Lyon, C., Thompson, M., & Wiliam, D. (2005). Classroom assessment, minute by minute, day by
day. Educational Leadership, 63, 19–24.
Minstrell, J. (2001). The role of the teacher in making sense of classroom experiences and effecting
better learning. In S. M. Carver & D. Klahr (Eds.), Cognition and instruction: Twenty-five years
of progress (pp. 121–150). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
