Your written feedback will play a bigger role in learning if you can create a culture of improvement in your classroom.

By this, I mean a culture in which learners understand that they can improve their work, that improvement is something to be striven for, and that making changes based on the feedback they receive is a positive thing.

This can run counter to some learners’ existing perceptions.

A common experience for many teachers is the learner who finds it difficult to see feedback in a positive light – who gets defensive when told they could improve something and seeks to withdraw from the feedback rather than embrace it.

Written feedback can exacerbate such tendencies because of its fixed and seemingly immutable nature.

The comments are written on the learner’s work, set rigid for all to see.

This contrasts to verbal feedback where information is spoken and then disappears.

Feedback of this type tends to feel less threatening to those learners who assume (falsely) that critical feedback is some kind of rebuke.

Creating a culture of improvement is often about changing how these learners think.

Altering their perceptions so they start to see the written information you provide as an objective assessment of how they can get better – as well as what they are already doing well – as opposed to a subjective riff on their deficits or lack of ability.

Of course, we never intend our feedback to be the latter, but this doesn’t stop some learners perceiving it as such.

So, what can we do to foster this culture of improvement, one in which all learners see their learning as a work-in-progress, and feedback as a boon the teacher provides to help them develop?

Here are five simple techniques you can try.

Maintain the Positive to Critical Ratio

For many learners, giving multiple strengths and a target helps take the sting out of constructively critical comments.

Done repeatedly, it habituates learners into a pattern: they know your feedback covers several things they’ve done well and only one thing they could improve.

Avoid the trap of giving indiscriminate or meaningless praise, however.

It is more useful – in terms of developing learner mindsets and helping them to understand what good looks like – if you ensure the strengths you identify are relevant and justified.

Talk in Terms of ‘We’

As in:

• ‘What we need to do next to improve your work…’
• ‘I’d like to see you using a greater range of examples to show your wider understanding. We can work on this together next lesson.’

This technique places you and the learner on the same team.

It is particularly useful when a learner feels feedback is being ‘done to them’ as it subtly removes this sense of a ‘me and you’ dynamic.

You can also talk in terms of ‘we’ after learners receive their written feedback.

While the class are reading and acting on what you have written, identify those learners who would most benefit from hearing this kind of language and go and talk to them about their feedback.

Reframe what you have written in terms of ‘we’.

Draw the learner’s attention to this and demonstrate that the two of you are on the same team, working together to improve their work.

Give Examples of What Change Will Look Like

This helps learners visualise what their work will look like once they’ve implemented your targets.

Some learners find it difficult to project forward in a positive manner.

They don’t necessarily believe they can improve and so struggle to take the information you are giving them, hold it in their minds, and turn it into a potential future.

Giving examples of what change will look like serves two purposes.

First, it helps learners understand why your feedback is relevant and how it can be of particular use to them.

Second, it presents learners with a model of implementation they can borrow from or imitate, making acting on your feedback a little easier.

Refer to Changes and Improvements Learners Have Made in the Past

Here we are invoking the experiences learners already have of developing themselves and their learning.

We are reminding them of the positive steps they have previously taken and may have forgotten about – or deliberately overlooked.

They can use this as a means through which to engage with their current feedback.

It is also a point of reference for the general benefits of acting on feedback.

The argument being that they have done it before, reaped the rewards, and can thus do it again, reaping further rewards as a result.

Invite Learners to Give Written Feedback

This can be in several forms: self-assessment, peer-assessment, assessment of a piece of exemplar work, assessment of your teaching, or assessment of the lesson as a whole.

In each case, the aim is to help learners better understand the process of delivering written feedback so as to change how they perceive the written feedback you give to them.

To successfully achieve this change, draw learners’ attention to what is happening as they give their feedback.

Help them to understand that when we assess something we make judgements and that these judgements are about what we think does and does not accord with the criteria we invoke.

And that when we spot something that doesn’t accord with the criteria, we build a target around it, so that improvements can be made.

Doing this helps bring the structure and purpose of feedback out into the open.

It removes much of the emotional content learners may project onto it, effectively neutralising negative perceptions and making it easier for learners to act on constructive criticism.