How do I want to receive feedback? This is different for each person. My “pillars” of feedback would include acceptance, honesty, a nonjudgmental posture and hope. Others may have a different set of pillars depending on their learning style and personality.
Today we did an activity where we gave feedback on another group’s feedback on a lesson Anne did with us. It was feedback on feedback. Our objective was to keep Anne’s pillars of feedback in mind while critiquing her lesson. Her pillars were: respectful language, sandwich feedback, specific suggestion, focus on work, be encouraging and we are all learning. As we shared our suggestions, I started thinking about a type of feedback that I had not included in my original list, but seemed to trump all of the others. The feedback that would make me feel most respected and valued as a learner would be in the form of the question: “why did you decide to….”. This type of feedback would give me a voice and an opportunity to give reason for my choice of answer. It would also give my assessor valuable insight into how I learn. Most importantly, it would be an open invitation for me to think about my own learning. Why did I do that? Was it a good decision? Could I have done it differently? Isn’t that what formative assessment is all about? – causing us to think about our learning and be agents of our own change.