As stressed earlier, feedback is not an isolated classroom procedure. Its impact depends on adequacy of the instructions the teacher has conveyed, the nature of the goals and sub goals set, and the students’ conception of the assessment to be applied. To complete this chapter we list nine key points that help to describe when feedback becomes an effective instructional component.
1. The feedback process resides in that what is received and interpreted by a student, rather than what a teacher gives or believes has taken place.
2. Feedback can work best when criteria for success are known to the learner in advance, and where the goal to achieve such success is shared by students and teacher alike.
3. Feedback can best cue attention onto a task, with a known goal or sub goal, and away from self- focus.
4. Feedback must engage a learner at, or just above, the current level of functioning.
5. Feedback must challenge the student to invest effort in moving forwards, and assure the learner that it is perfectly natural to experience difficulties when mastering difficult tasks.
6. Feedback is powerful when the classroom climate is one of welcoming errors and seeing disconfirmation as a natural and positive part of developing and exercising new skills.
7. It is optimal when feedback matches the content of the instruction given earlier, and is in accord with available social modelling stimuli identified as worthy of emulation.
8. Feedback thrives in an environment where errors are welcomed, and error training may be a worthwhile adjunct to increase the power of feedback.
9. Feedback is received and used by students when teachers themselves are prepared to adapt and adjust their methods and priorities in response to the outcomes indexed through their students' success on various assessment outcomes.
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