The dark side of feedback!

   These days there are few teachers that don’t include in their teaching vocabulary the phrase ‘feedback’ and, to show they are on the ball, ‘feed forward’! And there are few rooms that don’t have written out (in ‘student friendly language’) ‘learning intentions’. And of course there are ‘negotiated criteria’ and ‘student self assessment’ to be developed. All these techniques are linked to the efficient sounding phrase ‘evidence based teaching’. All very technocratic if hardly original.

The proof is always in the results; in what students can demonstrate and do rather than recorded statistics and fancy graphs. And this ‘proof’, if it is required by those outside the classroom, ought to include attitudinal ‘data’ as well. All too often subjective aspects of learning, such as desire to continue with the activity, are missing.


Too often the processes have replaced substance; learning is essentially about every individual making their own meaning.

All these ideas seem to come from literacy projects relating to the ideas about formative assessment led by people like John Hattie. Hattie’s basic research finding was that the single most important way to improve students learning is ‘oodles and oodles of feedback.’ Hardly an original insight; I have observed creative teachers, who really value what students think and can do, using these ideas for decades.

Creative teachers succeeded because of their focus on helping students achieve creative work required them to help with a 'light hand'!. The difference between what creative teachers want and the formative assessment ‘converts’ is this avoidance of conformity – the valuing of individual responses rather than imbedding a way of thinking. And to make things worse many teachers, by applying a heavy handed exemplar criteria based approach to areas such as art, are developing classrooms that reflect teacher’s ideas rather than the imagination of their students.

These dangers were pointed out by Noelene Alcorn, in NZCER Set 1 2005, who wrote that this emphasis on evidence based policy making and teaching, while having value, may as well lead to a narrowing of teaching possibilities. She says this narrow emphasis of issues of ‘evaluation, assessment, and measurement have become a major focus'. By placing student’s success or failure in the hands of the teachers skill of using such techniques could place unnecessary responsibity or ‘scape-goating’ on teachers.

She also mentions that there are a number of other exciting approaches to learning that are available that may be being neglected, and that this ‘new found faith in evidence based teaching needs tempering.’ She is concerned that evidence based teaching is at the expense of ‘creativity imagination and higher order understanding. Teacher creativity has also suffered.’ She continues, ‘imagination and mystery are integral part of our lives. Not all evidence is factual. Education is a life long process concerned with much more than achievement of specified knowledge and skills.’

And in respect to this faith in feedback research has shown that feedback can actually reduce ones capacity for honest self reflection by reinforcing our expectations that others will and should tell us how we are doing and therefore reducing self accountability and belief in ones own ideas.

All this is not to say that these ‘evidence based’ techniques are not valuable, it is just that they should be used with sensitivity and respect for the identity and voice of the students.

If teachers notices that their students writing, art and verbal responses, are becoming ‘clone like’ then it might be time to ‘lighten up’. We may be turning into ourselves into technicians and in the process sacrificing the artistry of teaching and the mystery of learning.

The future requires not just those who can learn efficiently but learners with their talents and passions developed; with the imagination and confidence to their live creatively.