How can I provide useful feedback to my students that will help them improve?

Assessment supports instruction and learning in part by providing general and specific feedback that suggests corrective learning measures. Feedback, therefore, is an integral part of both the assessment and learning processes. Teachers, however, frequently miss the connection between assessment and learning and do not understand what appropriate feedback involves. It is common for teachers to provide students with approval, disapproval, or advice confusing these messages with appropriate feedback. In contrast, Grant Wiggins defines feedback that is designed to improve learning.

“Feedback tells you what you did or did not do and enables you to self-adjust. The best feedback is highly specific, directly revealing or highly descriptive of what actually resulted, clear to the performer, and available or offered in terms of specific targets and standards” (Wiggins, 1998).

Black and Wiliam (2003) define appropriate feedback by identifying the following key components in a feedback system.

• Data on the actual level of some measurable attribute
• Data on the desirable level of that attribute
• A mechanism for comparing the two levels and assessing the gap between them
• A mechanism by which the information can be used to alter the gap

The last of these components is identified as essential in the learning process. If information is not used to close the gap, feedback has not occurred.

Research evidence conclusively supports the use of feedback as a strategy to improve student learning. John Hattie’s (1992) review of 7,827 studies on learning and instruction revealed that providing students with specific information or feedback regarding their work in relation to particular objectives increased student achievement by 37 percentile points on summative assessments. Black and Wiliam (1998) also report unprecedented gains in student achievement resulting from the appropriate use of formative assessment and feedback. These researchers reported effect sizes of one-half to a full standard deviation. These effect sizes equate to approximately 30 percentile points or two grade-equivalents.

“The most powerful single innovation that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be ‘dollops of feedback’” (Hattie, 1992).

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