What Does it Look Like?

In Peer Feedback in the Classroom: Empowering Students to Be the Experts by Starr Sackstein, a discourse is opened about the use of feedback in the classroom. Sackstein talks about what meaningful feedback looks like in the class room and explains that there is a need for creating a “feedback-rich environment,” in taking opportunities to give feedback in a face-to-face manner (41). Giving feedback in this way sets students up for better interactions with others during difficult conversations and for receiving feedback in the future. The ability to give and, more importantly, receive feedback in a face-to-face situation develops confidence as well as exercising one’s self-esteem in a healthy way. Although creating an environment where both positive and constructive feedback is normal and the discourse of those types of conversations is open and flowing, it is important to teach students good ways to receive this feedback and how to apply it to what they are trying to achieve. Sackstein stresses the importance of customizing feedback for each student due to the potential of some students refusing the feedback that teacher gives (49). This connects to the need to see each student as an individual. A teacher should not to see a classroom as a collective but rather a collection of individuals.

Along with paying attention to assessment and feedback teachers need to be aware of the application of that feedback in the classroom. Sackstein identifies a connection between knowing students’ strengths and weaknesses and feedback (59-60). Reflection of feedback and self identify things that one does well and things to improve on gives students a safe place to practice self reflection and also allows them to ‘brag’ about what they do well. The acknowledgement of what one does well is looked down upon in social situations if it is done too much. Giving students a space where they can see their strengths and talk about them with others boosts confidence in their abilities which positively translates to more confidence in themselves and in their learning in the classroom.

Tools for Feedback

On the EduGAINS website there is a section dedicated to Descriptive Feedback with a video library of informative videos.

The video “Feedback – The Most Powerful Tool” talks about the benefits of feedback in the classroom and the importance for teachers to know how to give feedback to students in order for them to learn better and improve their learning. Teachers assess students’ progress and skills in a subject or class and therefore they know what the learning goals are for an assignment or for the class as a whole. The use of formative assessment, or ‘assessment for learning’, in the classroom gives students more opportunity to learn rather than to simply be assessed. As teachers look deeper into the meaning of assessment, students need practice of the with the skill they are learning before assessing the scope of what the student can do.

Using feedback in the classroom as a teaching tool creates more teachable moments in the context of getting feedback and using it. Feedback can be used to show students where they are at with their learning as well as which direction they need to move towards.

Student Involvement

Students involvement in their own learning is important for students to become more invested and engaged in what is being taught. When there are clear channels of communication between students and their teacher and more communication in general between the two, there is better understanding and less confusion. Anne Davies (2001) explains both short-term and long-term benefits to students communication about their own learning. She goes on to explain that “[s]tudent-involved communications rise from classrooms which students are involved in the classroom assessment process – they do not flourish in teacher-centered classrooms” (p. 50). Involving the students in the assessment process creates the chance for students to peer and self-assess which gives them opportunities to see their works through someone else’s eyes other than the teachers. This practice takes away some of the bias in assessment in teacher-centered classrooms.

Bringing peer-feedback and self-assessment into the classroom challenges students to look at what they have created or what other have created through a more critical lens. This emulates more real-world scenarios outside the classroom in the adult world and starts to give students practice in the proper way to give feedback to others. Peer-assessment and self-assessment is needed in the classroom to help create learners who can give constructive and meaningful feedback.

“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”

Bill Gates

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References

EduGAINS. http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/HOME/index.html

Sackstein, S. (2017). Peer feedback in the classroom: Empowering students to be the experts. ASCD.