Understanding the 4 levels of feedback

When teaching and learning are “visible” – that is, when it is clear what teachers are teaching and what students are learning, student achievement increases. John Hattie’s idea is something that our school has become very aware of over the last two years and we have started to embed what we think are some really fantastic practices all aimed at making all of us teachers really aware of what and when learning is happening, making it ‘visible’.

We have studied Hattie’s work on the factors that make the biggest impact on student achievement. One of these high impact factors has been feedback in the classroom. (Read an article by Hattie on feedback here) More specifically feedback that students and teachers are recieving whether it is from the teacher, from fellow students or even feedback that they are giving themselves. The feedback that the teachers is recieving is vitally iomportant here as this sort of feedback is the feedback that is informing teachers whether or not their students are learning and or what areas they are lacking in.

Today we have taken a close look at some of the work from Hattie’s excellent book “Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning By John Hattie (Routledge, 2012)” on feedback. Hattie talks about 4 levels of feedback.

It seems that there is a time and a place for all four levels of feedback (self feedback or praise is questionable though, Hattie discusses this form of feedback as having virtually zero impact on student achievement). But generally it is desirable to move from task orientated feedback, to process to perhaps the most effective form of feedback being self regulation.

Here is John Hattie talking about feedback in the classroom:

We had a chat as a staff and came with some examples of the different forms of feedback, check out some of the things we came up with:

We are now going to use our discussions as a springboard to take our knowledge into the classrooms and be very aware of the feedback our students are recieving. If you would like to explore feedback with some reading here are some fantastic resources for you to have a look at:

Further Reading from the Review of Educational Research on Hatties work available here

What sort of feedback do you see and hear the most?

What are some of things that you can do in your classroom to enhance the effectiveness of feedback that students are receiving?