Based on my own experiences both as teacher and leader over the last 24 years in education, I believe that feedback is one of the most powerful tools in a teacher’s arsenal.
When I first started teaching, I simply didn’t use it right. My cycle was:
- I taught something ‘adequately’
- By outcome, I differentiated my marking
- Students improved their work as far as their motivation would take them
No one had taught me any differently.
It was several years later that I started to embrace quality feedback and what this could mean to student learning and outcomes. The drive on DIRT (Dedicated Improvement & Reflection Time) and the ‘Power of the Purple Pen’ movement made a fundamental difference to my teacher habits.
The EEF toolkit suggests that feedback may have ‘very high’ impact for very low cost: this is certainly my experience across a range of schools.
