educational assessment of students

Educational Assessment of Students7e

Susan M. Brookhart & Anthony J. Nitko

Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Chapter 8

Providing Formative Feedback

Educational Assessment of Students, 7eBrookhart & Nitko

Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Key Concept #1

• Feedback is information about a student’s performance or understanding.

Formative feedback is information about a student’s performance or understanding that is intended to improve learning.

Using feedback effectively is one of the most powerful and positive things a teacher can do for student learning.



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Key Concept #2

• Feedback can come from many sources, including the teacher, peer, self, parent, books, and technology.



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Key Concept #3

• Understanding the types and characteristics of feedback helps you develop a repertoire of feedback choices.



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Feedback Referencing Schemes

• Norm-referenced feedback compares performance to other students.

“Your paragraph was the best in the class.”

• Criterion-referenced feedback compares performance to a standard and describes what students can or cannot do.

“You are particularly good at using a variety of descriptive adjectives.”

• Self-referenced feedback compares a student’s performance to his own past performance or sometimes to expected performance.

“This paragraph is better than the last one you wrote.”



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Feedback Referencing Schemes

• The best formative feedback for practice work is criterion-referenced or self-referenced feedback.

Use criterion-referenced feedback for the work of most students in most situations.

For students whose beliefs about their own capabilities are low, use self-referenced feedback to show them how they are improving.



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Feedback Focus

• Feedback can vary according to whether it describes results or processes underlying results.

• Outcome feedback is knowledge of results.

• “You got a B on that paper.”

Cognitive feedback describes the connections between aspects of the task or the process students used to do that task and the student’s achievement.

• “It doesn’t seem like you used the study guide very much.”

• Helps students know what to do to improve



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Four Levels of Feedback (Hattie, 2009)

• Level 1, Task or Product Level

comments about how well tasks are understood and performed.

“Your report presented a clear description of each planet, but only the names of their moons. Try to find some more information about the moons.”

• Level 2, Process Level

comments about the process students used to do their work.

“I wonder what the report would look like if you organized each planet’s section in the same way. That way readers could see the comparisons among planets more easily.”



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Four Levels of Feedback (Hattie, 2009)

• Level 3, Self-regulation Level

comments about students’ understanding and monitoring of their own activities.

“You seem comfortable working with a large amount of information. Can you come up with some ideas about how to decide which information is more important, so you know what to emphasize?”

• Level 4, Self Level

personal comments and evaluative judgments (not effective; should not be used)

“Smart boy!”



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Feedback Function

• Descriptive feedback gives information about the work.

“You developed your main character with lots of thoughtful details.”

• Mastery oriented: specifies attainment or improvement (e.g., criteria met or not met)

• Learning oriented: constructs achievement or the way forward (e.g., next steps or suggestions for extending learning)

Students see as informative and useful



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Feedback Function

• Evaluative feedback passes judgment on the work or the students.

Giving an A, rewarding with stickers, saying, “Good job!”

• May be focused on classroom/individual management (rewarding or punishing)

• May reflect performance orientation (approving or disapproving)

Students see as controlling



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Delivering Feedback

• The best method for delivering feedback depends on the student, the teacher’s relationship with the student, the content knowledge and skills in question, and the particular assignment or assessment.

Feedback can be delivered with various kinds of timing, but should be given when student has the opportunity to improve the work.

Feedback can be delivered in various amounts, but should be given in an amount a student can process and address.



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Offer Suggestions for Improvement Based on Student Need

• Reminder prompts restate the learning target.

“Remember we are learning to punctuate compound sentences.”

• Scaffold prompts give the student more support to complete the task.

“Can you find a word in that problem that suggests addition? Good. What two numbers should you add?”

• Example prompts model the work that students need to do, inviting them to use one of the teacher’s examples or create his own based on it.



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Select the Most Appropriate Mode of Delivery

• Oral (conversation especially effective)

• Written (comments throughout, at the end, or both; handwritten or via computer)

• As a demonstration (“do it like this”)



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Consider the Audience

• Individual feedback best when possible

• Feedback to groups is usually in the form of a lesson or mini-lesson “It seems several of you are having trouble

deciding how to begin solving this kind of equation. Let’s go over again how to isolate the variable on one side of the equation, all by itself, and why that’s important. I’ll stop and ask someone to explain why we did each step.”



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Reflect on Your Word Choice

• Be clear.

• Be specific.

• Use first or third person and focus on the work.

“I don’t understand what you mean here.”

“This paragraph doesn’t have supporting details.”

• Avoid second person.

“You didn’t use supporting details.”

• Keep the tone supportive.



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Key Concept #4

• For feedback to feed learning forward, students need to have a clear understanding of their learning target and an immediate opportunity to use the feedback to make progress toward it.



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Helping Students Use Feedback

• Before they receive feedback, students need to be aware of a learning target or larger learning aim in order to give the feedback a reference point.

• After they receive feedback, students need an immediate opportunity to use the feedback.



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The Feedback Environment

• Teachers should create a classroom environment that communicates to the student that learning is possible for everyone and that mistakes and revisions are a natural part of the learning process.

Teachers must explicitly discuss the learning process and the value of feedback and provide relevant formative feedback to students that is patently useful to them.

The students must have a mental model of the learning environment that understands it is for learning and feels emotionally safe.



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Key Concept #5

• Differentiate feedback according to students’ learning needs and language needs.



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Differentiating Feedback

• For successful students, offer more than good grades

Show that you’ve thoughtfully considered the work

• Identify what they did well, according to the criteria

• Offer constructive criticism when appropriate



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• For struggling students, deal with negative feelings first

Focus on self-referenced feedback, and emphasize improvement.

Affirm what the student has done correctly.

Offer supportive prompts for improvement.



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• For English Language Learners, take care to ensure they understand

Understand the steps and stages in the development of the student’s language proficiency

Use feedback consistent with the ELL instructional program

Aim for a conversational tone



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Strategies for Peer Feedback

• Provide a rubric or other structured listing of criteria

• Have students work in pairs or small groups

• Prepare the students to give and receive peer feedback

Set ground rules

Explicitly teach key skills



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Types of Feedback in Computer-Based Instruction

• Knowledge-of-response — computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information

• Answer-until-correct — learner must stay on the same test item until it is correct

• Knowledge-of-correct-response —computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information and gives the correct answer



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• Topic-contingent — computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information and routs the student back to learning material or to additional material

• Response-contingent — computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information and an explanation of why the incorrect answer is wrong and the correct answer is right



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• Bug-related — computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information and information about specific errors (obtained from a “bug library” of common errors)

• Attribute-isolation — computer provides item-level correct/incorrect information and highlights important attributes of the

concept being learned



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Effectiveness of Feedback in Computer-Based Instruction

• In general the trend is for more elaborative feedback to be more effective for learning.

Lower-ability students seem to benefit more from immediate, specific feedback (e.g., answer correct/incorrect).

higher-ability students may benefit more from feedback that requires them to more actively process information (e.g., links to resources).

educational assessment of students

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