5.2. Implications for teaching
5.2. Implications for teaching
There seem to be two main implications for teaching. The initial
finding that praise and feedback about the self have a negative
impact on learning might have an important impact on teacher
feedback behavior in the classroom as praise is the most frequently
used type of feedback in the classroom (Hattie & Timperley, 2007;
Pauli, 2010; Voerman et al., 2012a). In the Netherlands, recent articles
written especially for teachers and their use of feedback in the
classroom state that praise and feedback on the self are detrimental
to learning. We need to nuance this view and help teachers decide
when and how to use various types of feedback. Since non-specific
feedback such as “well done” might influence the emotional space
in a classroom, we would suggest that non-specific feedback should
not be avoided in classrooms. Instead we propose that this type of
feedback should be used sparingly and used in conjunction with
specific feedback. We would also encourage teachers to use feedback
on character strengths as a type of feedback to enhance
learning. And lastly, we suggest the use of progress feedback as a
type of learning-enhancing feedback, as a complement to
discrepancy feedback in the classroom.
Secondly, teachers might be challenged to be more aware of the
impact that their feedback has on the emotions aroused in the
receiver. Also, the context in which teachers provide feedback, and
the relationship they have with their students, might influence the
way feedback is perceived by the students. Teachers might increase
the use of feedback that arouses the activating types of emotion,
like pride, hope and joy, and be aware that emotions evoked by
feedback like anger and anxiety can have both an activating and a
deactivating effect. It might be helpful for teachers to check the
impact of their feedback on their students regularly by observing
and asking questions about the students' perception of the feedback
they received.
5.3. Final remarks
Returning to our initial example of feedback provided at the
beginning of this article, we would like to question how applying
the views described in the discussion above about feedback would
change the example. Isabel would perhaps not have come home
crying each day if the teacher had seen her zest and curiosity and
had mentioned these qualities to her (feedback on character
strengths). Alternatively, the teacher could have pointed out the
things she did right in her work (specific positive feedback on task),
or the way she went about doing her assignments (processing of
the task). He also could have noticed her resistance and said to her:
“I can see that you do not like this, can I help you?” (reacting to the
emotion that she was clearly experiencing and combining feedback
with a question).
The use of an additional perspective, namely that of positive
psychology, helps us to revisit the concept of feedback both in a
theoretical sense and in terms of its practical use in classrooms. The
combined attention on cognition, emotions, and character
strengths seems, in particular, to lead to a more balanced and more
effective view of learning-enhancing feedback. We believe this is
highly relevant for teaching.