This article discusses the importance of dissecting feedback and the student’s interaction with such to determine the benefit provided by specific feedback tools. The authors first establish the importance of conversational feedback, in which students can both understand and reject, if necessary, the feedback offered by their teacher. Such a technique should offer students a semblance of classroom agency, which encourages a partnership between teachers and their students so there exists reciprocity of feedback. The authors then goes on to note that a spectrum of feedback exists (12 types), which should be judiciously used in both evaluative and descriptive manners to evoke the most meaningful conversations from their student body. In varying subjects—which this article displays by offering evidence from STEM, English, and athletic perspectives—students tended to offer different responses after question prompting offered by the teacher. This is, in part, due to the dispositions of the students engaging with the feedback, but those in STEM were noted to respond with fewer words rather than with a dialog. English Studies students, on the other hand, were quicker to note areas of improvement within their work, thus allowing a dialog to flow between teacher the student. Due to the importance of this dialogic element, the authors conclude with the recommendation that feedback typologies cannot be fixed and thus should follow the idiosyncrasies that conversations oftentimes offer. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Ryan explores formative and summative feedback styles alongside the importance of language to implore further discussion on the matter. Ryan begins by delineating the importance of emphasizing formative and summative feedback to students, which involves the assessment of learning prior to and after assessments. While formative assessments can take the shape of peer-to-peer feedback as well as self-feedback, a summative assessment would typically take the form of an exam. Ryan then further delves into the nuance that comes with self and peer-to-peer feedback to highlight the importance of student agency. She mentions establishing class norms to create a sense of trust in her students before implementing a critique system, as oftentimes individuals, especially musicians, tend to take criticism as a personal offense rather than a performance growth opportunity. She mentioned highlighting what went well in a performance prior to discussion of what could have been improved and, to improve the quality of discussion in a peer setting, using a word-bank system to highlight important vocabulary that offers intrinsic growth opportunity. Lastly, Ryan discusses how feedback can come in many shapes and forms beyond verbal as different learning styles oftentimes require differences in feedback approach. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Svanes and Skagen discuss benefits that Didaktik, feedback research, and classroom research could garner if used in tandem with each other. Didaktik is a Swedish tradition that underlines the importance of a teacher’s professional autonomy alongside the importance of creating feedback that matches with the subject matter and the pupils involved. Svanes and Skagen go on to argue that a focus on language-based intentionality is too narrow of a lens to fully understand what is happening in the classroom. Didaktik instead focuses on what qualities the teacher uses when giving feedback. To further this idea, its mentioned that a student’s learning is subject to the presentation of the teacher, thus the outcome of such cannot be fixed in advance. This means that students may not understand what the teacher attempts to convey, which can sometimes boil down to classroom context. The authors provide an extended example, focused on guided reading.

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

In this piece, the effectiveness of feedback strategies are tested to determine what styles of feedback genuinely provide the most support to students. The journal article begins by discussing the merit of using explanations in place of simple corrective feedback in a timely manner to the interception of the issue. Alongside this concept, it was recommended that teachers profile their students to determine how one might go about receiving, perceiving, interpreting, and understanding the information presented to them. Such is important given that feedback is only as powerful as a student’s perception of it, in which case students oftentimes refuse to utilize the feedback received. To offer a unique perspective away from surveys, this journal used oral classroom feedback alongside video-stimulated recall to gather perceptions of feedback within one-on-one conversations to provide a time for reflection and correction. The results concluded that 30% of teacher feedback is not recognized by students, and further that around 30% of the feedback recognized was interpreted as per the teacher’s intention.  

 Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar