Four Levels of Feedback
Before writing a comment, ask: am I addressing the task, the process or the person? Task and process feedback improve learning. Self-level praise undermines it. Name your target.
Find this under Make feedback more useful
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of What Feedback Is in 03 Feedback, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
Not all comments do the same job. Hattie and Timperley distinguish feedback aimed at the task, at the process the pupil used, and at the person, and the levels are not equally useful: task and process feedback improve learning, while praise aimed at the self undermines it.
Naming your target before you write is a small discipline with a large effect on what ends up on the page. A comment about the person is usually easy to spot once you start looking for it.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
Marking a set of maths books, a teacher catches himself about to write that a pupil is a natural at this, and replaces it with a process comment: checking your answer against an estimate is what caught the error here. Same warmth, different target.
Try it
A way to begin
For one class set, label each comment T, P or S as you write it: task, process or self. The labels are for you, not the pupils.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- How much of your praise, when labelled honestly, turns out to be aimed at the person.
- Whether pupils can say what a comment was about: the answer, the method, or them.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- Warmth belongs in the classroom; it just should not be doing the job of feedback on the learning. The two can live in the same conversation without living in the same sentence.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
The levels come from Hattie and Timperley's model of feedback, and their warning about self-level praise is echoed independently in Kluger and DeNisi's findings on feedback that draws attention to the self. The card’s attribution stands as published: Hattie & Timperley.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Feedback.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 03 Feedback, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.