Changing Teachers’ Feedback Practices: A Workshop Challenge

Abstract

Feedback can promote teacher-student relations and student academic involvement, performance and self-regulation. However, some research indicates that teachers do not always employ feedback effectively. There is a need to promote teachers' appropriate use of feedback in the classroom. We describe a long-term workshop designed to enhance teachers' knowledge and skills in the use of feedback strategies, and appreciation of the importance of feedback. Twelve teachers participated in the workshop. Observations as well as teacher reports indicate that participation in the sessions and the follow-up classroom application enhanced teacher involvement, knowledge, competencies and positive feelings in the use of feedback strategies. A workshop for teachers that has specific objectives on feedback strategies, is presented along a school year, and involves reflective sessions intertwined with classroom application work, can effectively promote participants' involvement, knowledge and competencies in the use of feedback, as well as their outlook toward the importance of these strategies.Teacher feedback about a student's performance and understanding may constitute the most important practical aspect of the relationship between teachers and students (Black & Wiliam, 1998;Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2002). In addition to influencing student understanding and performance (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996, 1998Ponte, Paek, Braun & Powers, 2009;Salema, 2005;Valente, 1997; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001, teacher feedback plays a key role in student engagement with the school (Carvalho, Freire, Conboy, Baptista, Freire, Azevedo, & Oliveira, 2011;Conboy & Fonseca, 2009;Fonseca, Valente, & Conboy, 2011;Fonseca & Conboy, 2006;Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004;Schussler, 2009;Veiga, 2009;Verkuyten & Thijs, 2009). It also impacts the construction of student identity and academic trajectories (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; Solomon, in press component of the quality of the relationship that teachers develop with their students, feedback − along with the types of tasks and activities teachers propose − will affect the contexts of participation and can act to reify perceptions of identity (Carvalho & Solomon, 2012;Freire, Carvalho, Freire, Azevedo, & Oliveira, 2009. In spite of its importance, some evidence points to a possibly widespread teacher misapplication of feedback in the classroom (Tong & Adamson, 2015;Valente, Conboy, & Carvalho, 2009), and a consequent need for specific teacher education in this area.Effective Feedback: Evidence, Structure, ConsequencesFeedback occurs after a fact, and consists of the information we receive about how we are doing in the effort made to reach a certain goal (Wiggins, 2012). Feedback is always a consequence of how we perform and its instructional purpose is to provide information related to a task or learning process, in order to improve performance in a particular task and/or understanding of a particular subject (Sadler, 1989). According to Hattie (2009), feedback aims at the reductio...

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