Manage the affective nature of feedback

One of the first things to understand about feedback is that it has an emotional component, both for the people receiving it and the people giving it. If we can acknowledge and be aware that these sentiments exist as part of the feedback process on both sides of the exchange, it’s easier to work with them in mind to get the best result. Ultimately we are humans and feedback is a place where the affective aspect runs high because it’s tied to receiving an opinion from an onlooker about work done

Student viewpoint

• What are your expectations when receiving feedback from others?
  • How do you want to receive feedback? (think about the setting of receiving feedback, eg. in a private space, in a group/class setting, etc.)
  • What emotional state do you want to be in when receiving the feedback and how do you want to feel afterwards?

As we have all experienced ourselves as learners, it can be hard to receive critical feedback about something that you have worked really hard on. It can be hard to separate “something I’ve created” from “me and my capacity as an individual” – this natural fusion can mean that we take feedback personally and we are naturally geared to protect ourselves from these experiences. These difficulties, around being able to absorb feedback and build on it constructively, are the focus of other resources we have created that are student-facing.

Teacher viewpoint

• What are your expectations when providing feedback to others?
  • What emotions do you expect them to have and which ones do you want to see/avoid?
  • What emotions do you expect yourself to have and which ones do you want to see/avoid?

You want to do the right thing for your students and inspire them to do better, but it is hard to do this without giving clear feedback about the elements that they could improve upon. Trying to create a piece of feedback that is positively reinforcing which also points out failings is an emotional balancing act and can be very taxing to try and communicate, especially in the limited time and space that is available. This is not easy for anyone – it’s not just something you personally might find difficult – so accepting this collectively we can acknowledge the associated feelings and move past them to work with the problem itself. 

Another thing to be conscious of is your own feelings around a student’s engagement – it can be difficult to not become frustrated when students do not seem to want to reciprocate the effort that you are putting into trying to teach them about a subject. When you’ve gotten to the nth assignment which has done things the wrong way despite knowing you mentioned it specifically in class, it can be difficult not to shift into a primarily negative/punitive mode.

The key thing to remember is that you rarely have the full picture of what that student is experiencing. They might have other elements of their life that are holding them back from investing in a way that they themselves would be happy with. Students are also often aware that they have not spent the right amount of time working on something. Your role remains to communicate what they could focus on for subsequent efforts or what they can do to make further gains on their current efforts.

This is another key thing to acknowledge and remember. Regardless of where you are on your teaching journey, there will always be something new to learn. Giving feedback is a nuanced process that gets easier, or that you can have greater confidence in, the more you know about the subject, the assignment, the course, and the experience of giving feedback.

Depending on your familiarity, the advice provided in this collection may be too much take in and try to implement in one go. To make it more manageable you may choose a certain element you want to focus on in the near future (such as focusing on feed-forward, for example). Additionally, if you have the opportunity there are also some things that you can do to gather the feedback you need to make your practice around this better (see the ‘Getting feedback on your feedback’ resource).

Ultimately, try to remember not to give yourself a hard time for not being as good at it as you might like to be at the current time. You will have the opportunity to improve your practice, so take an iterative approach (try some things and be conscious of what works/doesn’t work this time to change for next).