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Recently in education, there has been a trend of teachers looking for how to give more constructive feedback to students without them feeling judged by simple number or letter grades. While grades can be a useful benchmark for students to be able to measure their progress in an objective and data driven way, most students lack the maturity to not fall into a negativity spiral when receiving a bad grade. This is especially true for teenagers who often lack resilience and trend naturally towards negativity.
In school and in life after graduation, many people hesitate to criticize others for fear of hurting their feelings or even eliciting anger from people feeling like they are being judged. While this fear is sometimes well founded, new research finds that people significantly underestimate people’s desire for constructive feedback.
While it can still lead to an uncomfortable social interaction, people often actually appreciate a gentle note about a smudge on their face, a typo in their report, or even larger mistakes they might not be noticing in their performance. So while teachers should still try to avoid making students uncomfortable for no reason, they shouldn’t avoid giving constructive feedback to students even if it can be hard to hear initially.
This article will go over new research on constructive feedback and help teachers realize that students actually do want and need feedback, even if it is uncomfortable for them in the moment. In addition to learning how to give constructive feedback to students, teachers will learn about the benefits and drawbacks of various approaches and see how Standards Based Grading, if used correctly, can be a balanced way to give objective but actionable feedback to their students.
The New Research on Constructive Feedback
The new research on constructive feedback was conducted as a series of five experiments. The first used hypothetical scenarios at work where the participants were asked to consider if they would give constructive feedback. These scenarios ranged from seeing a rip in someone’s pants or a smudge on their face all the way to errors in a report or sounding rude in an email.
Half of the participants were asked to consider whether they would give the feedback and the other half was asked to consider whether they would appreciate the feedback. The results showed that the people giving feedback significantly underestimated receivers’ desire to get feedback.
In addition to this, the gap between the expectations was higher for more important errors than the smaller issues. This means that people were less likely to give feedback when the issues were more serious such as an error in a report or interrupting a client multiple times. While people were more willing to let someone know they had a small issue like a lipstick stain, when the issues were larger, people were more hesitant to speak up despite the consequences being larger.
The following experiments tested similar situations, but in increasingly more realistic scenarios. The second experiment asked participants to recall a time they gave or received feedback, and the third used a roleplay between close individuals to test whether they would give and receive feedback readily. In all experiments, feedback receivers were much more willing to receive feedback than assumed by the feedback giver.
The fourth experiment tested one of the research hypotheses that suggested that perspective taking could increase the amount of constructive feedback to address this gap between desire for feedback and feedback given. Participants were again asked to recall a situation where they could have given feedback, but did not give it.
The researchers then asked some of the participants to consider whether they would appreciate feedback in such a situation. The researchers found that the people who were asked to consider the receiver’s point of view were more likely to give feedback, but still underestimated how well their feedback would be received.
The final experiment used a more realistic scenario to test their theories. Participants were recruited in pairs to compete in a speech competition being assigned to either give or receive feedback. Just as in all of the previous experiments, the feedback receivers were more willing to receive feedback than the feedback givers realized.
In this last study, however, it was revealed that it wasn’t just the feedback givers who underestimated the value of constructive feedback, but also the receivers. According to the study, “receivers believed they had received even more value after the competition compared to what they predicted before”. (Abi-Esber, et al.) So not only do givers undervalue their own feedback, but receivers also initially did not realize how valuable the feedback would be for them.
Teacher Takeaways
This research is vital for teachers to consider as they are constantly in a position of being the advice-giver for a large number of students. Many teachers get frustrated, feeling that students don’t value their feedback, but this research shows that teachers may undervalue their own feedback. Because feedback can be uncomfortable to hear, it is important to consider how to give constructive feedback to students in a way that is not only helpful to them, but doesn’t embarrass or shame them.
Not all feedback is created equal. There is plenty of research showing that simple number or letter grades can actually be demotivating for students and often don’t actually lead to improvement. (Kohn) With this pitfall in mind, how can teachers give constructive feedback to students without killing their spirit of learning?
Qualities of constructive feedback for students.
1. Constructive feedback should always include information on how to improve
One of the problems of a simple number or letter grade is that it does not help the student to actually understand what needs to be changed. This is especially true for more subjective tasks such as papers and projects, but still holds true for tests as well.
While some teachers might be tempted to say that the only thing students can do to improve is “study more” this doesn’t help change student behaviors and can be disheartening for students who actually did try to study.
Instead, teachers should try to note what types of problems students got wrong and suggest concrete study strategies to fill in those gaps. For example, if a student seems to have trouble with understanding class vocabulary, rather than saying that the student needs to “study vocabulary more”, the teacher should suggest something more specific like making flash cards or keeping a vocabulary list. This gives students actionable ways to change their approaches to learning and study strategies rather than just being a vague “do more!”
2. Constructive feedback should be bite sized.
Students can get disheartened when all they see on their paper is a list of all of the things they did poorly. Especially when there is a lot of work to be done, the amount of suggestions may overwhelm many students, especially when they aren’t sure how to tackle all of their issues simultaneously.
Teachers should be mindful when giving feedback to not just bleed all over a student’s work with red ink, highlighting every single error. Instead, teachers should note areas of weakness for the student and note those errors, but not exhaustively. Noting an error once or twice and then suggesting that students should look for the noted error throughout the paper or project will let the student know there is an issue without nitpicking every little flaw and making the student feel defeated.
This approach also puts more of the onus of improving work onto the students. Rather than it being the teachers job to handhold students through every single error they have made, teachers should guide students by noting areas they should focus on and giving them time to review their work independently and reflect on how to improve moving forward.
3. Constructive feedback should always include positive and negative elements.
Many teachers have heard of the “feedback sandwich” approach for constructive feedback which suggests that critical comments should be sandwiched between compliments on what the student has done well. This approach is beneficial because it mindfully cushions any criticism with comments about what the student has done well. This does well to keep spirits up, but also has the benefit of helping students see not only what needs to change, but what they should ensure does not change in their writing.
While it is important to not be overly negative, especially with students who are struggling to keep up and could give up if overwhelmed, it is equally important to not be overly positive and not give mindful criticisms. This is particularly important for highly able students who often complain that the only feedback they receive is “Great job! Keep up the great work!” While this might not seem like a big deal as the student is already succeeding, it can lead to them becoming bored, underchallenged, and stagnating in their learning.
Every student has things that they are doing well and things that they could do to improve. It is a teacher’s job to analyze how much feedback a student can handle, which areas are the most important to highlight, and ensure that each student has concrete steps to use to take their work to the next level.
The answer for how to give students constructive feedback to students will vary by student, and the teacher needs to use their professional judgement to see how much feedback a student can handle. Rather than trying to give all students “equal” feedback, teachers should give individualized feedback based on their personal rapport with each student.
4. Grades must be reflected upon to create meaningful change.
One mistake many teachers make is giving students grades and then simply moving on to the next activity. This is especially the case for traditional multiple choice and short answer tests. Teachers who simply hand tests back with a grade and tell students to “look over” their test will not see results as students rarely have any idea how to mindfully review their own work.
If a test is worth taking, it is worth spending class time learning from. Many people complain that testing doesn’t help students and is really simply used to collect data for the whole school. Teachers need to do their part to make tests beneficial for their students. Including reflection activities with mindful questions for students to consider and answer as they look over their test is a good first step to making sure tests aren’t just a measurement of how well students have done in the past, but are an active teaching tool that helps students perform better in the future.
Giving students a sheet with questions to answer is a good first step, but there are many ways to reflect on a test, paper, or project. One of the best ways is to give students a copy of the grading rubric that the teacher uses when looking over an assignment and challenge students to grade their work themselves. This can be done as a feedback activity for rough draft papers and projects or final graded work.
Even using this approach on short answer tests requires students to go back through the test questions, consider their answers, and see whether they got the right answer or not. Rather than the last thing a student is exposed to when taking a test is their wrong answer, this approach ensures that students always get at least one more look at the right answer. A student who gets a wrong answer on a test clearly did not know the material and needs to review more. This approach ensures that not only do students go over studied materials again, but it helps them target their areas of weakness and correct their mistakes so that they can remember better for next time.
Are numerical grades useful in constructive feedback for students?
When considering how to give constructive feedback to students, some teachers and administrators suggest that feedback should be exclusively qualitative written feedback and that no number or letter grade should be assigned to student work. This is a difficult and hotly debated question with no clear answer. While grades undoubtedly have too much importance in school, removing them entirely comes with their own set of issues.
Benefits of numerical grading systems
Grades provide a simple and objective measure for how students have done on an assignment in comparison to a set standard. While standards are often arbitrary, and not useful in the real world, there is one place where they still hold significant weight.
College application processes rely heavily on numerical grading systems in order to cut down the massive number of applications they receive. Students who are not given grades will have a significantly harder time applying for and getting into further education, a major goal for many students.
In addition to this, students need to know how they are doing on tasks in order to know when they need to improve. Every teacher knows that students aren’t always the best judge of how well they have done on their work. This holds true for weaker students as well as highly able students who are often very hard on themselves.
While number grades vastly oversimplify a student’s performance, long form written feedback from the teacher in place of a grade comes with issues of subjectivity and personal bias where a more objective numerical grading system has fewer issues.
Students who don’t get clear indicators of how well they are doing may have a skewed perception of how well they are doing in a class. Especially when teachers are using the above approaches like the “feedback sandwich”, students may note that they receive a lot of positive and negative feedback just like all of their friends. While this is good in one way to help the not get discouraged when they compare themselves to their classmates, it also can come as a nasty surprise at report card time when they get a far lower mark than they were expecting.
While grades should not be the only motivator, students who think they are doing fine in class may not worry as much about studying as they actually need to in order to perform well. Giving students a clear number simplifies the feedback process into an easy to digest number or set of numbers that reduces the chance that students misinterpret their performance on tasks.
Drawbacks to numerical grading systems
While nice and simple, numerical grading systems have a plethora of issues that can not be ignored. Just giving students a number at the end of all of their hard work can feel defeating. Seeing a number, especially one lower than they were expecting, can be very deflating for students, especially older students who are naturally more negative.
Just giving a simple number may cause students to feel a simple response of “good” or “bad” based on standards at the school, the grades their friends have gotten, or their own expectations for themselves. If teachers want students to consider their feedback more, they should give more to consider.
When the teacher just gives a grade without any explanation, students often just respond with feeling good or feeling like a failure. Neither of these feelings is particularly helpful for improvement. Written feedback explains what students have done well and what students need to improve regardless of whether they have done poorly or not. This is more helpful for students who are strong and those who are struggling because it ensures students don’t make oversimplified judgments about their performance.
Written feedback gives teachers an opportunity to use the tips above to give constructive feedback for students in a way that helps them to improve, rather than just putting a number that gives no information on what the issues were or how to address them. Good written feedback not only tells students where they did poorly and how to improve, but also highlights the areas they did well. This is something that a simple number grade can not do.
Standards Based Grading as an alternative approach.
Some schools have considered alternative approaches on how to give constructive feedback to students on their work that utilize qualitative and quantitative elements. These approaches try to marry the benefits of giving students more qualitative feedback about how they need to improve without hurting feelings while also giving students the solid numerical data they will need later on in life.
Standard Based Grading is another very popular approach that attempts to marry the benefits of both approaches. Standard Based Grading still assigns numerical grades to students’ work, but gives multiple grades based on several different skills that the student was supposed to show in their work. These numbers are usually 1-4 rather than 1-100%. The grades are often accompanied by a description as listed below:
- Shows little understanding or mastery of content.
- Shows some understanding, but needs improvement.
- Meets the standard expectation of understanding.
- Shows advanced understanding and mastery
For example, an English teacher might give a student a 3 on the student’s vocabulary and grammar, a 2 for the student’s knowledge of the text, but a 1 for the students ability to identify and analyze literary techniques if they forgot that part. Giving students multiple grades like this helps them to see that they have areas of strength and areas of weakness rather than an oversimplified average grade. This can help students to target specific skills they are lacking and not lose heart or feel that they don’t know anything.
A science teacher might do something similar giving students separate grades on various learning objectives of the course. One of the 1-4 grades might be given for the student’s ability to understand and format scientific data effectively, another might be given for the student’s knowledge of concepts shown in multiple choice or short answer questions, and a final grade might be given for the student’s ability to do math/chemistry equations manipulating the information they have received.
This Standards Based Grading is helpful because it gives students some guidance on areas to focus on without requiring the teacher to write out paragraphs of text. It also still is suited well for objective measurement and helps both students and teachers focus on the class learning objectives.
When grading rubrics are used consistently and always grade the same skills like vocabulary and content knowledge, it helps remind everyone of what they are learning. When students see that each test they do fine on the conceptual knowledge section, but struggle with vocabulary, they can be guided to write up some flashcards before the next few tests.
Additionally, teachers who see many students struggling in the same areas can address the gaps through mindful classroom activities. This helps the teacher make data driven decisions for classroom practices and also gives them the tools to measure their own effectiveness as students grades rise. The Standards Based Grading system can also be easily transformed into a traditional grading style to be sent off to further educational institutions.
Including constructive feedback activities for students by students with peer review.
While teachers try to give as much feedback as they can, many struggle with how to give students constructive feedback when teachers oftentimes have classes of over 20 or even 30 students. Multiply that by the number of classes that they teach and it is easy to see how giving long form written feedback can quickly become overwhelming.
This is especially hard when some hard working students want multiple rounds of feedback on each assignment. While the teacher will always do their best to give students support, sometimes it is better to teach students how to support each other and themselves rather than relying solely on the teachers word as law.
Including constructive feedback activities for students to do together can help students receive more feedback on their work and also learn other skills such as how to give constructive feedback themselves. Teachers can give students either the instruction sheet again or a grading rubric and have students go through a partner’s work and “be the teacher” giving feedback and a grade or grades.
This is especially beneficial for rough drafts of papers because not only does each student receive written feedback about things they need to improve or forgot to include, but students can then use what they’ve learned from the paper they reviewed to improve their own work. While teachers always include example work for students to emulate, reading other examples and considering how the teacher will grade them helps students to be more analytical of their own work as well.
One important thing to consider is that students need to be very carefully grouped for these activities. While it can be good for students of different skill sets to look over each other’s work, too large of a skill gap can be demoralizing and frustrating for both students. The stronger student may struggle to know how much feedback their partner can handle and the weaker student may not be able to identify or adequately explain what their high performing partner needs to fix.
It is generally best to group students together who attain similar end results, but struggle in different standards from the Standard Based Grading system. One student who is stronger in conceptual knowledge can pair well with a student who is stronger at grammar and sentence structure for example.
Another great pairing is an organized student with a creative student. The organized student will often just parrot things they’ve heard from the teacher or read online while the creative student may have great ideas, but have expressed their thoughts in an unclear or grammatically incorrect way.
One of the best ways to pair paper review partners is to put together a student who writes too much with one who writes too little. The teacher can explicitly tell the students why they’ve been paired and encourage the flowery writer to help expand the ideas of the efficient writer and tell the efficient writer to help the flowery writer to identify areas where ideas are repeated too much or could be shorter. This will help both students to feel like they have a purpose and that neither is the “good” writer.
This approach of pairing opposites helps students to learn to value different types of learners and see how different perspectives can help to improve their work. In addition to this, they will learn how better to kindly suggest changes and give constructive feedback. In a world that is increasingly divided by bitter rhetoric, these types of activities will help students to learn how to use their words to help others rather than tear them down.
The research shows that people want feedback, even when it may be uncomfortable. These types of activities will teach students to not fear feedback and learn how to make giving feedback more comfortable for themselves and the receiver.
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References
Abi-Esber, Nicole, et al. “‘Just Letting You Know … ’ Underestimating Others’ Desire for Constructive Feedback.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000393.
Kohn, Alfie. “The Case Against Grades.” Educational Leadership, 2011, http://www.montessoriprivateacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/alfie-kohn-article-from-educational-leadership.pdf.
