Feedback is an incredibly effective way to sustain learner purpose and target learners’ efforts.
Let us imagine two classrooms.
One in which no feedback is given, the other in which feedback plays a central role.
In the first classroom, the teacher makes no attempt to help students target their effort beyond setting tasks and delivering content.
They may offer overarching explanations of why working hard matters, why the topic of study matters and so on, but this is not supported by personalised interventions or specific goalsetting in the form of targets.
Some learners are relatively OK with this, particularly those who are self-motivated.
But even these learners are losing out, because the teacher’s expertise is not used to help them better sustain their purpose and target their effort.
While fostering independence is important, this cannot be to the exclusion of the most powerful tool at the teacher’s disposal.
Let us now turn to the second classroom.
In this one, we find that all students have a target and that the teacher gives them time to work towards this.
We also see the teacher circulating through the course of the lesson, delivering feedback intended to support students and develop their learning.
In this classroom, the teacher is using feedback to influence what students do and think.
To help them target their effort.
To indicate what is important.
And to keep them motivated.
A good example here is the comparison between a student who has a target and a student who doesn’t have one.
Imagine we are in an A Level Sociology classroom.
Student A has the following target: ‘You need to bring more evaluation into the main body of your essay. Having described a key theory or piece of research relevant to the question, make sure you then critique this. Highlight its strengths, weaknesses and limitations. Don’t be afraid to contrast theories or to use one piece of research to criticise another.’
Student B has no target.
What then happens, in terms of purpose and effort, when they come to write their next essay?
Student A has useful information from the teacher in the form of feedback.
They can use this to direct their effort, safe in the knowledge that successful implementation of their target will lead to improvements.
They also have a goal to aim at.
And goal-directed behaviour tends to be a feature of sustained motivation.
In addition, feedback of this type can cultivate a sense of intrinsic motivation.
Students come to realise that they are in control of developing themselves and growing their own abilities (in growth mindset terms, they come to focus on learning goals, which are internal, rather than performance goals, which are external).
Student B does not have useful information from the teacher.
They don’t have any feedback.
They may still perform to a high standard.
And they may be able to sustain a sense of purpose and target their efforts effectively.
This is particularly true of self-motivated learners, those who actively seek out success criteria, and conscientious learners.
But we cannot be sure.
And many learners in this position find it much harder to effectively target their efforts compared to if they had feedback showing them how to do this.
An absence of feedback, for many students, means an absence of direction. Or, at least, a harder path to finding direction.
This emphasises the way in which feedback draws the teacher into a coaching role.
We are giving students information they can use to change, modify and adapt what they are doing and how they are thinking.
This is very much like the role of a coach.
Unlike a coach, we also focus on delivering knowledge and cultivating understanding more widely – something a coach may do, but which isn’t central to their job in the way that it is for a teacher.
So, feedback is a powerful tool in part because it shapes the size and direction of learner effort and helps to create and sustain a sense of purpose.
One explanation I would suggest as to why the research indicates that feedback has such a big impact is because consistently receiving high-quality feedback (access to the teacher’s expertise) means learners are consistently able to target their efforts in the most useful direction.
While this is a perfect world explanation (we’ve all come up against those difficult situations when students ignore our feedback or refuse to see it in a positive light!) I still believe it has a lot to commend it; as demonstrated through the contrasting examples above and as, I’m sure, you could attest from receiving good, bad and indifferent feedback during your own learning experiences.
