Maximizing Feedback Practices Through Purposeful Conversation

An Arts Educator’s Guide to Maximizing the Impact of Feedback and Adding Additional Sustainability to an Essential Piece of the Creative Process

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Think back to the time when you received feedback. It could be about anything — a paper, a project, a photo.

Got that piece of feedback in your mind?

Now, did that feedback prompt a clear course of action? Of did it prompt some head scratching?

Did the feedback bring about positive feelings that inspired a course of action? Or did it encourage defensive rebuttals?

As an educator and leadership coach, I firmly believe that the combination of feedback delivery and clarity is essential.

Why? Because this combination will promote greater impact and implementation of ideas.

During your next feedback session, consider applying these tips to not only enhance critical thinking skills, but to develop collaborative relationships with the person who has requested feedback:

1. Purposeful Scheduling

2. Specificity Through Factual Language

3. Summarizing Before Moving Forward With An Action Plan

Purposeful Scheduling

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Block a time in your schedule for feedback sessions.

Make sure that you understand what the person who has requested feedback wants and focus in on those wants to give the most honest, authentic perspective.

When I first started teaching, I used to spend hours writing out all kinds of feedback because I assumed it was my duty as a teacher.

Huge mistake.

There is limited opportunity for conversation in this technique. Plus, the impact of the comments was determined on how much time the student devoted to reading the rubric.

Now I purposely schedule time for conferences and process checkpoints. Instead of sending a writing list of “things to do next time” back with the students, we work together to talk through their goals and their learnings.

This technique can be applied to industries beyond education. The open dialogue and engagement in the work not only promotes authentic conversation, but deeper levels of critical thinking.

When someone asks you for feedback, schedule a time to discuss the person’s intentions before and after you review whatever has been requested for feedback. Block a time in your calendar, free yourself from distractions, meet in a neutral space, and focus on the piece in question. Having the conversation before you dive into the piece will clarify the person’s intentions, prompting a richer conversation about the goals of the work.

Cautious Note: be realistic about the amount of time that you can give to this conversation. This feedback process can be game changing, but only if you manage your time properly.

Specificity Through Factual Language

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Are you being specific with the language being used in the feedback?

Let me elaborate by providing a few examples from the world of dramatic education. In this world, students will often analyze dramatic ideas and present their interpretations in a presentational format.

After presenting, the worst piece of feedback a student actor could receive is:

I really liked your facial expressions. Good job.

Yes, the sentence validates the presentation, but gives the actor no information about how to move forward with next steps. There is some positivity in the audience’s response to the facial expressions, but no specificity around how the actor’s use of characterization or staging brought delivered the message of the piece to the audience.

Instead, I prompt my students to talk about a specific moment in the dramatic presentation and then use an example to link what they just saw to their critical thinking. For example:

Your use of physical qualities, including the shaking of the tablecloth, really made me believe that your character was nervous. Having these physical qualities during your characters’ monologue really heightened the tension in the scene and created more suspense for what was going to happen next.

The same level of specificity needs to be applied for next steps. An example of specific feedback that gives the actor information on how to move forward is as follows:

I am wondering if it would make sense for your character to add more dynamics to your dialogue to bring out your character’s conflict. Try to explore different volume levels when responding to others the scene to bring out the characters’ intentions.

The specific feedback statements provide the actor with a road map for moving forward. By using language specific to the situation, the actor can contextualize what works for the audience and what could be pushed further.

Regardless of the industry, using specific language and examples from the piece-in-feedback-question not only honours the work in front of you, but provides a clear plan of actions for next steps.

Summarize Before Moving Forward With An Action Plan

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Before the feedback session ends, it’s important to summarize the key points in developing an action plan.

I often ask my students to develop their action plan using the three prompts:

• what they will keep in the piece

• new ideas to be adopted into the piece

• ideas to be re-worked or re-consider

After reviewing the specific feedback statements, I then ask my students to create a realistic action plan including checkpoint due dates and look fors. These due dates and look fors are important as they prompt the students to not only consider the feedback, but they time they need to make choices to revise their work.

This part of the process always requires some sort of documentation. Whether it’s voice memo recording of the conversation or a paper handout, we will re-visit these conversations once they have had time to complete the revisions. Students must also identify accountability partners and document their progress in order to fulfill their action plan.

Most importantly, I always stress that feedback is coming from the perspective of the viewer and that the artist must make choices regarding how much change to incorporate into the work. Feedback is a solid data point to gather information regarding how others see the work. However, at the end of the day, the author of the piece must make the final artistic decisions based on what message they want to share with the audience.

I encourage readers to not skip the summary stage before developing an action plan. Sometimes the multiple feedback points can be overwhelming and might not benefit the whole nature of the piece. By engaging in this summary stage before setting an action plan for incorporating the feedback, everyone can set manageable priorities for incorporating the feedback.

Overall, everyone who puts their work forward for feedback should be congratulated. Receiving feedback is a vulnerable activity where one’s choices are on full display for constructive criticism.

By incorporating the practices of purposeful scheduling, specific language, and summarizing, it is my hope that the feedback will be more tailor towards your piece’s needs while supporting the wellness of the person who asked for the feedback in the first place.

This article is also published on Medium. Click here for the Medium link.

Active Reflection Linked to Authentic Need, Not Dictated Activities

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How many of us explicitly use reflection tasks to link professional development to our school/classroom goals? Take the 3-2-1 comments from the exit card and apply those comments to daily work in the classroom?

What if we flipped and incorporated these reflection tools into our pedagogy and not as a “check the box activity” or for performance appraisal purposes? But to make explicit links through our reflection tasks on how their daily practices are addressing the school’s goals and urgent student learning needs.

A good place to start is through professional development. After identifying the key learning from the professional development, ask:

1. How do you take the theory and/or examples and then turn them into action?  

2. How do you drive the learning forward in away that will not only uphold strong pedagogy, but address the learning needs of the students in your classroom?

3. What else do you need to keep learning as an educator while addressing the learning needs of your students?

4. How will you monitor the impact on student learning through the work?

Through my experience leading activities on school improvement, quite often hear (or read on feedback forms) that a barrier to completing this work is “not enough time.” The teams needed more time to talk, more time to gather data, more time to reflect. In fact, “more time” was the number one requested resource.

Let’s just face it, there will never be enough time.

What if we switched it around, made time and structured reflective conversations that aligned with our professional development into our long range planning time? Instead of “pop reflections” where we pose a question and encourage five minutes or focused discussion, encourage educators to bring data to frame the conversation. Build on that data to create next steps and then apply those next steps in the classroom.

In order for this to be truly successful we need monitoring systems that work for the individual teacher. Methods where the teacher doesn’t only collect the data, but uses their own framework to analyze the data and plan next steps. In this framework, the teacher can synthesize all of the observations/conversations and funnel them into actionable next steps.

Create a sustainable monitoring system that works for you. There are lots of options - from running log using a Google Doc to physical portfolio of student work. Pick one that works for you and set aside some time to link your professional development with addressing the student learning needs.

I encourage educators to start moving away from “pop reflections” and reflecting when someone tells you to do so. Being explicit, and setting goals the merge your professional development, data and student learning needs, will have great, positive impact not only on student learning, but your own pedagogical development.