Not only Grades!! But meaning feedback is need of an hour for the students

Not only Grades!! But meaning feedback is need of an hour for the students

Grades is not only important, meaningful feedback to students is important factor in student development process

For this we need a right set of diagnostic tools, that tools can efficiently and professionally help teacher appreciate the strengths and areas of development of each and every student.

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Why students need meaningful feedback, not just grades

Imagine you went to a doctor for a routine check up, and the doctor said you have an unhealthy lifestyle and must change that.

Imagine you went to a doctor for a routine check up, and the doctor said you have an unhealthy lifestyle and must change that. She then suggested three options: take care of your health; do more physical activity; walk briskly for 30 minutes every morning as your job is sedentary.

Which advice would you find the most meaningful? The first is too broad and something you already know; it adds no value. The second provides a solution, but falls short of creating an impact as it does not tell you what needs to be done. However, the third one is specific: it identifies the gap and tells you exactly what you need to do given your circumstances.

Let’s apply the same principle to a classroom. Maya, Santosh and Neha are grade five students in different schools. They appeared for their term exam, and all three scored 40% in mathematics. Their respective teachers evaluated their performance and gave feedback in different ways. Maya was asked to study harder. Santosh’s teacher asked him to focus more on studying maths. Neha’s teacher said, “You struggled with 2-digit subtraction with carryover,” and then gave her remedial worksheets to improve her 2-digit subtraction concept. The feedback provided to Neha is specific and meaningful, which, along with the remedial sheets, has the power to impact Neha’s learning.

Meaningful feedback is a concept studied by various researchers. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) notes, “A teacher would collect, analyse and interpret a student’s performance on various measures of the assessment to come to an understanding of the extent and nature of a student’s learning in different domains.” The framework mentions that impactful learning takes place when a teacher provides timely feedback and suggests corrective action to a learner after understanding performance.

John Hattie and Helen Timperley of the University of Auckland conceptually analysed feedback and reviewed the evidence of feedback’s impact on learning and achievements. “Feedback needs to provide information specifically relating to the task or process of learning that fills a gap between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood (Hattie and Timperley, 2007).” The next question is, “When is feedback most meaningful?” To find out the effectiveness of feedback, Hattie synthesised results of 180,000 studies and found that the highest effect involved students receiving information feedback about a specific task and guidance on how to do it more effectively. Praise, rewards and punishments had a lesser effect. Feedback must be targeted at individual students and it must be specific to impact their learning.

Multiple studies, different articles and the pilot we ran all point towards the importance of meaningful feedback. Providing feedback that is specific, caters to the student who is receiving it, and tells clearly what needs to be done is the need of the hour. This will not only increase self-awareness in a child, but will also bridge the learning gap, thereby making the teaching-learning process more effective.

To make this happen, we need the right set of diagnostic tools. Tools that can effectively and efficiently help teachers understand the strengths and areas of improvement of each and every student. Such a tool would ensure that teachers are spending most of their time in communicating and closing the learning gap, rather than conducting assessments and analysing results. With such tools and committed teachers, we can ensure that meaningful feedback is provided to every student consistently, leading to maximum learning.

Source | Financial Express | 5^th March 2018

Regards

Prof. Pralhad Jadhav 

Master of Library & Information Science (NET Qualified) 

Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository  

Khaitan & Co 

Blog | http://pralhad-fyilibrarian.blogspot.in/  

Website | https://sites.google.com/site/pralhadjadhavlib/home        

Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978