Teacher Feedback Can Make or Break Students

At some point in our lives, we may have come across a situation where we were told “you can’t do this,” or “you won’t pass with behaviour like that”. However, comments like this either ‘make us’- motivating us to strive for the best, or ‘break us’- dishearten and demotivate us.

Therefore, when using such comments, we need to be mindful of the situation and the impact it can have. Consider three examples of recent research below:

• In a recent study examining student-teacher relationships, it was found that having a positive relationship with a teacher can promote pro-social acts such as altruism and co-operation.
• An English teacher critiqued assignments by including a sentence at the end stating that she had high expectations of the person and believed that if they worked hard then they would meet those expectations. She found that 80% of the students rewrote the assignment, in comparison to a third of their peers who were provided with simple feedback.
• A group of sixth-grade students were taught that ‘intelligence’’ was not a fixed construct but something which could be developed. It was found that after eight lessons, the students’ math grades, which were steadily declining, increased substantially while the control group continued to decline.

The first research shows that creating a rapport with our learners is not only beneficial for them academically. The second example highlights the importance of feedback - something which ultimately is inevitable. So we should aim to do this constructively in a manner which will support our learners in more ways than one. The last example focuses on the way in which small dialogue in the classroom can motivate and create big changes. By informing students their intelligence and performance is not a concrete construct allows them to exert effort resulting in academic success.

Using these small interventions may not necessarily result in a ‘quick-bullet’ transformation of our learners, but if done consistently, it can certainly improve the way in which they change their mindset.

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