Effective Feedback — The Catalyst for Learning Excellence
8 min read
Have you ever received feedback that completely transformed your approach to a skill or task? Or perhaps been given criticism that left you deflated and unmotivated?
Feedback is one of the most powerful catalysts for learning and achievement — yet its impact can vary dramatically depending on how it's delivered, received, and applied. When done well, feedback creates a crucial bridge between current knowledge and future learning.
This newsletter will explore the essential elements of effective feedback, examine different feedback sources, and discover practical strategies for both giving and receiving feedback that promotes learning. Whether you're a teacher, coach, parent, or lifelong learner, mastering the art of feedback can transform your learning experiences.
Before getting into the ideas on feedback, take a look at Belcher’s Model for Learning. Please work through the model, thinking about the learning process of learning as described by the model.
Belcher’s Model for Learning is a continuous learning loop:
Inputs to the body and brain: Sensing and Focusing + Feedback from Practicing and Performing
Processing (in the brain’s Working Memory): Inputs + Conceptual Models in Long-Term Memory
Output with the brain and body: Practicing and Performing
The feedback from Practicing and Performing makes learning a continuous loop — though getting feedback can be very challenging. Some feedback is too basic; other feedback is too advanced. Some feedback is delivered in a mean way; other feedback is delivered too nicely. Some feedback is quick; other feedback takes a long time or is never received.
To have effective and efficient learning, the feedback we receive must be the right kind in the right way at the right time.
Sources of Feedback
There are a few different sources of feedback, each with their own characteristics.
Give to ourselves before, during, and after any experience.
Can focus on many different parts of the experience: Senses, emotions, knowledge, skills, processes, or outcomes.
Develops as we go from novice to intermediate to expert, creating more detailed understanding in each part of the experience.
Comes from different sources: Technology, peers, and experts.
A downside: By passively receiving information the learner does not actively update the knowledge and skills in conceptual models, which hinders the learning process.
An upside: The external source can guide the learner to the next area for learning, making learning more effective and efficient.
Both the internal and external sources of feedback are valuable for learning; each source has much to contribute when learning. Internal feedback — also known as metacognition — helps us actively monitor our learning, deepening our understanding of many parts of experience. Developing the ability to have productive internal feedback is an incredibly valuable skill, greatly increasing the effectiveness and efficiency when learning. External feedback — especially from experts — helps us overcome learning barriers. These barriers may happen through many different parts of the experience, causing us to be lost; with external feedback, we can find our way back on track and continue learning.
Core Elements of Effective Feedback
Effective feedback has three core elements: The right kind in the right way at the right time.
The Right Kind of Feedback — Detail and Direction
To help the learner use the feedback in the learning process, feedback needs to have the correct amount of detail and point the learner in the correct direction.
When dealing with detail the wrong kind of feedback is too basic or advanced, creating a mismatch between the level of learner and the amount of detail in the feedback. Novices have weakly connected and limited knowledge and skills, causing their working memory to become easily overwhelmed. With these limits, novices need smaller pieces of basic feedback to implement — which then helps strengthen and expand the novice’s knowledge and skills.
As the learner transitions into the intermediate and expert stages, the detail of feedback can increase. The learner’s knowledge and skills are well-connected and robust, freeing up space in their working memory to implement more detailed feedback. In an interesting twist, this detailed feedback for experts can be condensed into specific cues; though the cues seem small to an outsider, the cues trigger a massive amount of knowledge and skills for the expert.
When dealing with direction the wrong kind is generic and vacuous, causing the learner to flail about in any and every direction. Novices will make mistakes in many different areas, so the challenge is to find the most important mistake and help the novice correct that mistake. Giving feedback on the most important mistake to the novice will build a solid foundation for their knowledge and skills, plus naturally eliminate other less important mistakes. Continuing the process of giving feedback on the next most important mistake creates progress, helping the learner improve their knowledge and skills — plus give the learner motivation to continue the learning process!
Learners in the intermediate and expert stage make less mistakes, so the learner knows more easily the direction to take. However, intermediates and experts need to check the root causes of the mistake; a foundational misunderstanding in knowledge and skills may be causing the issue, which becomes the issue to solve.
As a general guideline, the right kind of feedback matches the level of the learner with the correct amount of detail — and provides the learner with the correct direction to continue the learning process.
The Right Way for Feedback — Emotionally Appropriate
For a learner to receive feedback well, the feedback must be emotionally appropriate for the learner.
Feedback does not exist in an emotional vacuum; instead, the way that feedback is received by the learner depends on many different factors. These factors can be combined into a few different categories:
Personal characteristics: Amount of sleep, nutrition, emotions, stress level, and any other physical or mental state
Connection to the learning experience: Motivation, focus, curiosity, and learning orientation
Social relationships: Peers, a coach or teacher, and fans
If the feedback does not happen in an emotionally appropriate way, then there is a strong chance that the feedback will not help the learner. The learner’s focus becomes the emotional response, negating any helpful part of the feedback. Worse yet, the wrong emotional response could lead to an extremely defensive reaction by the learner — causing the learner to shut down and stop engaging with the experience.
On the positive side, feedback that does happen in an emotionally appropriate way helps the learning process. As an example, I’ve been both an athlete and coach — when I was an athlete, sometime the emotionally appropriate feedback was getting chewed out and other times the feedback was a gentle correction. My coaches were really good at understanding which one I and my teammates needed in the moment, which I tried to emulate during my coaching.
There are a few ways to create emotionally appropriate feedback:
Separate the person from the performance.
Instead of language that has fixed judgements, use language that focuses on growth.
Create psychological safety — from the leaders and peers — that normalizes the full range of emotions during learning.
Balance challenging conversations with genuine affirmation for the learner.
By creating the conditions for emotionally appropriate feedback, the learner remains open and willing to continue learning — helping continue the learning process.
The Right Time for Feedback — Timing
For effective and efficient learning, the feedback must be delivered at the right time.
Changing the timing of feedback can drastically change the effectiveness of the feedback. However, there are two major challenges for delivering feedback at the right time: The environment and the learner’s level.
The environment can be broken into two categories: Wicked and kind. In a wicked environment information is hidden and convoluted, so patterns are very challenging — or even impossible — to find and use. Also, there may not be any rules, or the rules will change constantly. With rapidly changing information and rules, there is no consistent pattern for the timing of feedback; the learner will need to figure out when they need feedback. A kind environment has open information and stable rules, creating sets of patterns. Even though the patterns may be hard to master — a golf swing or detailed moves in chess — the patterns exist, which allows feedback to happen with a consistent timing.
Another challenge with properly timing feedback is knowing the learner’s ability — is the learner a novice, intermediate, or expert? Each level has different needs for internal or external sources of feedback:
Novices have a weak set of ways to use internal feedback, so they need frequent, immediate feedback from external sources.
Intermediates have a stronger set of ways to use internal feedback, allowing them to have a less frequent need for external sources of feedback.
Experts have a very strong set of ways to use internal feedback, allowing them to have the least frequent need for external sources of feedback.
If the learners are in a kind environment, they should use as much internal feedback as possible — this allows the learner to self-regulate their learning. Coaches and teachers need to push novice learners to develop internal feedback, plus challenge intermediates and experts to use detailed versions of their internal feedback. By taking ownership of their learning through internal feedback, the learner can have make the learning process effective and efficient.
Having learners use internal or external feedback that is the right kind in the right way at the right time creates effective and efficient learning, making learning great!
We all have stories about learning plateaus; here are a couple of mine.
Story 1: One of the parts of sports is giving and receiving feedback, which happened well with my college soccer team. I walked onto the team as a raw player, with limited tactical knowledge about playing systems. The coaches were patient with my questions, using feedback to help me understand the hows and whys for parts of our team. The coaches also helped channel my intensity during training and matches into productive playing, focusing the intensity on the process of playing well. I’m grateful for the example set by those coaches because they were great coaching role models!
Story 2: While teaching at a high school in South Carolina, one part of our schedule was a “block” schedule. This meant we taught the same students for 90 minutes during the fall semester, then switched to a totally new group of students during the spring semester. This greatly helped with the teaching feedback loop; instead of trying to remember (and taking good notes) for what happened the previous year, we only had to remember back a few months. With two full courses in one year we could try interesting teaching ideas, then modify depending on the outcome. This shorter teaching feedback cycle helped me become a better teacher more quickly, for which I’m grateful.
Story 3: I’ve become interested in financial planning and broad market cycles, which has many challenges for feedback. There are many interesting outcomes based on many different factors in the market cycles, but many financial analysts and planners have only lived through part of the market cycles — plus the market cycles may look similar on the surface, but actually have different characteristics. Markets are an example of a wicked environments, so I’m curious as to how financial professionals handle the challenges in feedback. If you know anything about this, I would love to learn from you!
How does Belcher’s Model for Learning describe the learning process?
Does the idea of a continuous learning loop make sense? Why or why not?
Why is having a strong sense of internal feedback important?
When has external feedback helped you?
When has external feedback hurt you?
When you give feedback, is the feedback with the right kind in the right way at the right time?
Learning happens when we share what we are thinking, so I would love to hear your answers! Also, you can use these questions as conversations starters with friends and family — hearing their answers and having a conversation would be great!
Want more information about learning? Check out The Principles of Learning course (the same information, with different levels of feedback):