less marking more feedback

Less

marking,

more

feedback

David Didau

Col laborat ion in Educat ion

Teaching & Learn ing Leeds - 2nd July 2016

What’s the difference

between marking and

feedback?

Why do we mark?

1. To grade and summatively assess

students’ performance

2. To help students to improve their current

level of performance

3. To motivate students to work harder

4. For accountability purposes.

Reading or marking?

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Effe

ct s

ize

Approaches

Average Effects

What’s the evidence?

What Hattie actually says

Feedback is one of the most powerful

influences on learning and achievement, but

this impact can be either positive or

negative.

Simply providing more feedback is not the

answer, because it is necessary to consider

the nature of the feedback, the timing, and how

the student ‘receives’ this feedback (or, better,

actively seeks the feedback)The Power of Feedback (2007)

Distribution of feedback effects

Kluger & DeNisi (1996)

Getting feedback right is hard

Response type

Feedback indicates performance…

exceeds goal falls short of goal

Change behaviour Exert less effort Increase effort

Change goal Increase aspiration Reduce aspiration

Abandon goal Decide goal is too easy Decide goal is too hard

Reject feedback Feedback is ignored Feedback is ignored

Bjork on feedback

• Empirical evidence suggests that delaying,

reducing, and summarizing feedback can be

better for long-term learning than providing

immediate, trial-by-trial feedback.

• Numerous studies—some of them dating back

decades—have shown that frequent and

immediate feedback can, contrary to

intuition, degrade learning.

Learning vs Performance (2013)

A-Z or Satnav?

Specific, detailed,

immediate feedback

to encode success

Beginning of a

courseEnd of a

course

Delayed, reduced and

summarised feedback

to promote

memorisation

Feedback has been

internalised

The Feedback Continuum

Less marking, more feedback

• How long does it take to mark an essay?

• What happens to the marking after work

is returned?

• What could you do instead?

The problem with judgement

• There is no absolute judgment. All

judgments are comparisons of one thing

with another

• At best our judgments are ordinal. We can

place things in an order, but scarcely more

than this…

Donald Laming, Human Judgment: The Eye of the Beholder

The problem with judgement

Which is worst?

1. Forgetting to mark students’ books

2. Turning up late for a lesson

3. Cheating in an exam

The problem with judgement

Which is worst?

1. Punching a child

2. Embezzling money from the Pupil

Premium account

3. Cheating in an exam

Decontaminating Human Judgments

by Removing Sequential Dependencies

The task

Swindon Academy Yr 5 students

Signal vs noise?

Phds vs teachers

it was(?) the goblet lay close by, so close he simply could not resist it. He snatched it before ran for his life. And even as he ran an idea came into his head. This gift for his master, the(?) goblet would be a perfect (?)

But the dragon through his perfect? scales had felt the loss of the treasures.

When the dragon wakes but the skin is as red as a tomato he is as big as a sky scraper. to(?) and he smell of gold

Why do we need coordinates?

Proof of progress

Progress relative to other schools (Mean

GCSE grades 1-9

proofofprogress.co.uk

Key points

• Marking and feedback are not the same thing

• Feedback is always powerful but not always positive

• Less might sometimes be more

• Comparative judgement may be a better use of teachers’ time

@LearningSpy

learningspy.co.uk

ddidau@gmail.com