marking, Less more feedback David Didau Collaboration in Education Teaching & Learning Leeds - 2nd July 2016

What’s the difference between marking and feedback? http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/performance/resources/readings/power-feedback.pdf

Why do we mark? Reading or marking? To grade and summatively assess students’ performance To help students to improve their current level of performance To motivate students to work harder For accountability purposes. Reading or marking?

What’s the evidence? It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it…

What Hattie actually says Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative. Simply providing more feedback is not the answer, because it is necessary to consider the nature of the feedback, the timing, and how the student ‘receives’ this feedback (or, better, actively seeks the feedback) http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/performance/resources/readings/power-feedback.pdf The Power of Feedback (2007)

Distribution of feedback effects In 38% of studies, giving feedback actually reduced outcomes! Kluger & DeNisi (1996)

Getting feedback right is hard Response type Feedback indicates performance… exceeds goal falls short of goal Change behaviour Exert less effort Increase effort Change goal Increase aspiration Reduce aspiration Abandon goal Decide goal is too easy Decide goal is too hard Reject feedback Feedback is ignored

Bjork on feedback Empirical evidence suggests that delaying, reducing, and summarizing feedback can be better for long-term learning than providing immediate, trial-by-trial feedback. Numerous studies—some of them dating back decades—have shown that frequent and immediate feedback can, contrary to intuition, degrade learning. http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/Soderstrom_Bjork_Learning_versus_Performance.pdf Learning vs Performance (2013)

A-Z or Satnav?

The Feedback Continuum Beginning of a course End of a course Specific, detailed, immediate feedback to encode success Delayed, reduced and summarised feedback to promote memorisation Feedback has been internalised

Less marking, more feedback How long does it take to mark an essay? What happens to the marking after work is returned? What could you do instead?

The problem with judgement There is no absolute judgment. All judgments are comparisons of one thing with another At best our judgments are ordinal. We can place things in an order, but scarcely more than this… Donald Laming, Human Judgment: The Eye of the Beholder

The problem with judgement Which is worst? Forgetting to mark students’ books Turning up late for a lesson Cheating in an exam

The problem with judgement Which is worst? Punching a child Embezzling money from the Pupil Premium account Cheating in an exam Decontaminating Human Judgments by Removing Sequential Dependencies

The task

Swindon Academy Yr 5 students

Signal vs noise?

Phds vs teachers

it was(?) the goblet lay close by, so close he simply could not resist it. He snatched it before ran for his life. And even as he ran an idea came into his head. This gift for his master, the(?) goblet would be a perfect (?) But the dragon through his perfect? scales had felt the loss of the treasures. When the dragon wakes but the skin is as red as a tomato he is as big as a sky scraper. to(?) and he smell of gold

Why do we need coordinates?

Proof of progress Progress relative to other schools (Mean GCSE grades 1-9 Progress relative to other schools measures show whether pupils’ performance has changed relative to other schools. No progress in this context means you are doing as well as everyone else. The dots show the mean and the bars show the standard error of the mean. proofofprogress.co.uk

Key points Marking and feedback are not the same thing Feedback is always powerful but not always positive Less might sometimes be more Comparative judgement may be a better use of teachers’ time

There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. @LearningSpy learningspy.co.uk ddidau@gmail.com