One of the comments which often comes up in discussions with students in focus groups around feedback is the tone of the feedback received, and importantly the perception of the tone.
Assessment and feedback are placed in a challenging position between aspects of regulation, judgement, quality assurance and the ‘double duty’ of feedback towards enhancing development and progression of skills and understanding (Boud, 2010).
And this latest blog in the series is written with refreshed perspectives and renewed acknowledgement of what Naomi Winstone and colleagues have observed as the dominance of the transmission model of feedback within HE (thanks to Ania Udalowska in Engineering for organising a great recent event on good feedback practices).
So within this current paradigm of assessment and feedback, one of the grand challenges is to consider not only whether ‘double duties’ should become ‘divided duties’, but in the time we are in now, how best to develop practices which create an environment where how are you doing can merge with how you are doing.
In one of the popular aphorisms in recent educational literature, Willingham advocates that ‘memory is a residue of thought’, but in regard to feedback, I feel we should also attend to the fact that ‘memory is a residue of feeling’. As a first reflection to the impact of tone, and so feeling, on my own experience of feedback, I’ve tried to represent it through this graphic:
So a couple of things to note about this. Firstly, that this obviously a simplistic form of catharsis or closure on my part representation. Secondly, that this representation made me reflect on what I valued in the nature of the feedback as well as my own opportunities to act on that feedback. It entailed me thinking about my own motivations, subsequent responses to feedback and indeed the relationships I held with those I entered feedback dialogue with.
And there are certainly gaps in this model.
What about where feedback is regarded as objective or neutral? I would suggest that because of the investment made in assessments that it is very hard to receive feedback without attaching an emotive response to it. I didn’t really know about Boud and Carless’ work on the affective impact of feedback when I was 11. Maybe that does help to explain why it’s hard to recall feedback which did not have an emotive impact and hence the lacuna in the middle of this graph.
You could certainly argue that a %, ✓, X or ? are neutral notations (colour of ink notwithstanding). But for me, not only did I perceive the percentage score I received for my poem as negative because of the emotional investment in writing it and my expectation of the mark I would achieve, but because of the paucity of other feedback. Cue frustration, resentment and reluctance on my part.
Yet in other focus groups around assessment, students have typically questioned having positive tone to feedback and then expressing frustration when the feedback does not provide a rationalisation of how to improve or why the assessment has not earned ‘full marks’.
In this regard, my most positive and helpful anecdotal experience came where I felt there was opportunity to develop my craft or practice and this is very much in the spirit of what Claxton (2013) sees as a form of ‘epistemic apprenticeship’. I wonder whether the fact that I inadvertently overheard this comment (it was a plaster of Paris sculpture – lovely) whilst I was working on it was one of the key influences of my experience of helpful and positive feedback.
So if we return to a previous question from this blog series, ‘how often does feedback help you to improve your work?’ (note the question in its typical form is not ‘how often does assessment and feedback help you to improve your work?’), then in a sense we are also considering how motivated are you (as a student) to actively engage with your feedback and how motivated are you by the feedback and opportunities to engage with, explore and utilise your feedback comments.
So this represents a difficult balance to strike. Tone is a narrow focus to see as a ‘feedback feat’, but tone is a one helpful proxy for a more complex problem – and it might be a useful place to start from.
From that starting place comes a finishing place…and so the natural conclusion to this (self-consciously redemptive) narrative arc is to finish with a ‘poem’.
There was an essay that was due,
With a conclusion needed anew.
They planned talk amongst peers
And got some good steers
And now they can give valuable feedback too.
Other than letting me know a percentage score for this poem, what experiences of different tones of feedback have you experienced?
Hi Joe, I think this is super important. It draws attention to the fact that we often resort to ‘tone-poor’ forms of feedback such as written forms (cover sheet with rubrics, BLUE — it goes both ways!) rather than conversation. My sense is that when students come and see me on the back of written feedback I have provided, it isn’t normally to complain or to ask for clarification or further information but simply to have a chat — to feel that the feedback form isn’t the end of the story. To hear a human voice. Equally, I think quite often when students come and see us in the run-up to an assessment, it isn’t so much because the guidelines and brief we have provided is insufficient but precisely because it is ‘tone-poor’ — it’s a grim-looking (in terms of design) section on Blackboard, when a chat in someone’s office and a smile provide an opportunity to be human (even in assessment!).
Hi Christophe,
Thanks for taking the time to read, engage and respond. Yes I wholeheartedly agree with you – and I would extend that sentiment beyond education and academia.