Feedback

Feedback is now accepted as a key factor affecting learning and is a key feature of interpersonal communication. The term is absent from the older dictionaries, because it first began in electronics and then became a basic concept in the broader field of cybernetics before it filtered through into psychology to attain the wider significance it carries today. In cybernetics, feedback was first associated with self-regulatory systems. Then, systems theory raised the level of complexity to include the input of information from outside the system that was relevant to its performance. From there it filtered through into both behavioural and cognitive theories of learning from experience. Feedback from experience is not necessarily dependent on interpersonal communication. People can try things out, make mistakes, celebrate success and learn without any witnesses. Such feedback is largely determined by what is noticed, what is regarded as significant, how it is interpreted and whether it is stored in long-term memory and/or contributes to current or future actions. When other people are involved in giving feedback, the same factors apply to the recipient of the feedback, but the perspective of the giver of feedback, or of any observers, may be very different. The feedback given is not the same as the feedback received. In education and workplace settings, the term ‘feedback’ is now mainly used in the context of formative assessment, where its main purpose is intended to be the provision of guidance on the quality of a person's understanding and/or performance. This could apply either to a specific situation, decision or event, or to an ongoing process of learning or working in a particular context. Although feedback ranges from the broad and global to the narrow and very precise, it has a strong emotional dimension, which may lead to feedback intended to be narrow being interpreted as being broad. Moreover, even when the provider of feedback stresses that it is the action or performance that is the subject of the feedback, many recipients interpret it as being a comment on their person. Thus, messages intended for guidance may be interpreted as judgemental. Another problem arising from too close a link between feedback and formative assessment is that formative assessment is usually conceived in quasi-formal terms and provided by people with some authority. Much feedback is informal and provided by a wider range of people, including senior people not having authority over the learner. Sometimes important feedback messages can be indirect. For example, the allocation of work is often perceived as indicating a judgement of a person's capability, and personal agency in seeking such work may lead to more rapid learning, or even earlier promotion. At the other end of the scale is the undue importance attributed to second-hand reports of conversations and chance remarks by insecure learners who feel starved of feedback. The relationship between the cognitive content of feedback and its emotional dimension was explored by Trope et al. (2001, pp. 257–258), who interpreted responses to negative feedback as posing a self-control dilemma: Individuals may want … to know what skills they need to improve, what kinds of tasks to choose or avoid, and how much effort and preparation to invest in those tasks they choose. At the same time, individuals may be deterred by the emotional costs of negative feedback. These costs involve negative esteem-related feelings such as shame, dejection and disappointment. Indeed, research on task choice has found that people expect diagnostic failure to improve the accuracy of their self-knowledge, but also to make them shameful and dejected. In contrast, people expect diagnostic success to promote their self-knowledge as well as feelings of pride and gratification. Thus, the decision to accept negative feedback that is diagnostic of self-relevant attributes entails a trade-off between long-term information gain and immediate emotional costs. Their own research (Trope et al. 2001, p. 271) indicated that the individuals’ mood and sense of priority may also influence how this conflict is resolved: When the feedback was diagnostic of an important ability, participants who were in a positive mood preferentially solicited and extensively processed feedback regarding their weaknesses. However, … when he offered feedback that was non-diagnostic or when it pertained to an unimportant ability, participants who were in a positive mood preferred to receive feedback regarding their strengths rather than their weaknesses. In one experiment, Trope et al. showed that people in a positive mood not only seek but also better remember and accept arguments that specify the health risks associated with caffeine consumption. This diminished their positive mood, but enhanced their willingness to give up unhealthy habits. I have three suggestions regarding the context that might affect the mood in which health and social care practitioners and students receive negative feedback. The first occurs when there is an ongoing relationship of mutual interaction, which entails positive feedback at a global level. The second is when the feedback is followed by discussions about, and support or suggestions for, specific improvements. The third is when the recipient is known to be formally engaged in relevant learning, either through having student status or through being engaged in a recognized ‘learning project’ at work. Improving the mood by choosing or creating a setting that indicates concern for the learner may also have a positive effect. A related area of laboratory research, which has been followed through into ethnographic research in classroom settings, concerns the relationship between achievement and motivation, and how it is affected by feedback. Two theories of particular interest are Attribution Theory and Goal Theory. Weiner (1998) argued that a key factor affecting learners’ motivation lies in how they attribute their perceived success or failure. He uses four constructs for this purpose: Locus of responsibility: Does this lie with the learner or is it attributed to other factors? Scope: Does it relate to a specific event, a class of events or a wider range of contexts? Control: Can the factors be controlled by themselves or by others? Stability: Are the factors relatively stable or unstable? (Note that in ‘Locus of responsibility’ and ‘Scope’ the terminology has been changed to clarify the text.) Where the responsibility is seen as personal, the scope is regarded as significant, and the factors are viewed as stable and controllable, success will raise motivation and failure will lower motivation. Although it is the learners’ attribution that is deemed to affect motivation, this attribution is significantly affected by teachers and significant others in the work environment. The ‘Goal Theory’ of Dweck (2000) is based on a distinction between two kinds of achievement goal: Learning Goals, in which individuals strive to increase their competence to understand or master something new; and Performance Goals, in which individuals strive to document, or gain favourable judgements of, their competence or to avoid negative judgements of their competence. Dweck analysed research on children's approaches to schooling to show the main characteristics of these two orientations. Torrance & Pryor (1998, p. 85) summarize her research as indicating that children with learning goals: • choose challenging tasks regardless of whether they think they have high or low ability relative to other children; • optimize their chances of success; • tend to have an ‘incremental theory of intelligence’; • go more directly to generating possible strategies for mastering the task; • attribute difficulty to unstable factors, e.g. insufficient effort, even if they perceive themselves as having low ability; • persist; and • retain their self esteem, and are relatively unaffected by failure. These characteristics are developed through co-operative work and encouraging personal (ipsative) standards of success. In contrast, children with performance goals: • avoid challenge when they have doubts about their ability compared with others; • tend to self-handicap so as to have an excuse for failure; • tend to see ability as a stable entity; • concentrate much of their task analysis on gauging the difficulty of the task and calculating their chances of gaining favourable ability judgements; • attribute difficulty to low ability; • give up in the face of difficulty; and • become upset when faced with difficulty or failure [Note that the wording has been changed to clarify the text.] (ibid, p. 85). The ethnographic studies of Torrance & Pryor (1998) in several primary school classrooms revealed how both the general classroom discourse and separate conversations with individual children demonstrated teachers’ encouragement of performance goals rather than learning goals, with often unintended consequences for the long-term motivation of their pupils. Their conclusion is that ‘approaches to formative assessment where the complexity of the situation is minimized and interaction is seen in purely cognitive terms’ (p. 105) help the teaching to ‘move on’ but provide little real help to the learner as to what to do next. Any attempt to understand the learners’ needs ‘must involve a critical combination and co-ordination of insights derived from a number of psychological and sociological standpoints, none of which by themselves provide a sufficient basis for analysis’, and be ‘contextualized in the actual social setting of the classroom’ (p. 105). If we return to consider the determinants of individual feedback listed in my opening paragraph – what is noticed, what is seen as significant and how it is interpreted and used – we can now see how dependent these factors are on the social context in which the feedback is given. The feedback perceived by learners in education settings is hugely influenced by the classroom culture, and that in turn is influenced by the wider culture of the organization and the state structure for professional formation. When we move to workplace contexts, there are similar, if not identical, factors affecting learning. Much learning at work occurs through doing things and being pro-active in seeking learning opportunities, and this requires confidence. Moreover, confidence arises from successfully meeting challenges in one's work, while the confidence to take on such challenges depends on the extent to which learners felt supported in that endeavour. Thus, there is a triangular relationship among challenge, support and confidence (Eraut et al. 2000). The contextual significance of the word ‘confidence’ depends on which aspects of this triangular relationship are most significant at any particular time. Often, it comes close to Bandura's (1997) concept of self-efficacy, relating to their self-perceived ability to execute a particular task or successfully perform a role. But, especially in the early career stage or when the stakes are high, it can also refer to their confidence in their colleagues’ support. Further research led our joint Sussex/Brighton research team to add further elements to each apex of this triangle (Fig. 1) to reflect other factors found to be significant for the learning of early career professionals (Eraut et al. 2005a). First, we decided to separate feedback from support, because it is not necessarily supportive and can effect motivation in some of the complex ways discussed above. Then we recognized that commitment to work and to colleagues is generated through participation in teams (much less common in education settings) and through appreciation of the social value of the work. Then, personal agency recognizes participants’ own sense of choice, meaningfulness, competence and progress (Thomas 2000), which is not necessarily aligned with their employer's priorities. Triangular relationship among challenge, support and confidence. The main contextual factors that influence these learning factors are the allocation and structuring of the work, relationships in the workplace and expectations of and by learners. Learners’ expectations are critical to their views on the kind of feedback they need, and relationships are critical for the manner in which the communication of feedback is given and received. Given the various perspectives on interpersonal feedback discussed above, it is important to include informal and indirect feedback in any definition. So, for the purposes of this editorial I define feedback as: Any communication that gives some access to other people's opinions, feelings, thoughts or judgements about one's own performance. This excludes feedback given to groups of people, which raises many issues beyond the scope of this editorial. Group feedback is closely allied to the concepts of the ‘learning team’ and the ‘learning organization’ and deserves separate treatment. In order to study feedback more closely, we need to distinguish four types of setting in which feedback may occur. Immediate comment on aspects of a task or a role given on-the-spot or soon after the event by a coparticipant or witness. This has the greatest chance of being more specific and taking into account situational factors that may later be forgotten. Informal conversations away from the job. These often convey indirect and/or unintended messages as well as intended advice. Their role is particularly dependent on the local learning climate. Formal roles, such as mentor or supervisor, which involve some responsibility for a learner's short to medium term progress and an obligation to provide formative feedback on a regular basis. The quantity and quality of such feedback varies widely, not only with the skills of the providers, but also with their opportunities for witnessing the work of those they are meant to support, and the priority accorded to that role in that particular work context. Appraisal is a more formal and less frequent process, through which a more senior worker is expected to give normative feedback on personal strengths and weaknesses, ascertain their views on their learning opportunities and discuss whether they were meeting their own and their employers’ expectations. This process also depends on the appraiser's skill, their relationship with the people they appraise and the quality of the information available to them about their appraisee's performance. The first two types of setting are informal and embedded in the local learning culture. They also depend on the specific affordances for learning provided by the learning context. I will now present and discuss examples of each of these potential feedback settings, before returning to discuss the role of indirect feedback in situations where there is little direct feedback. One important finding of our research was that the majority of workplace learning takes place as a by-product of working processes, for which we developed the following typology (Eraut et al. 2005b): Participation in group processes Working alongside others Problem solving Consultation Tackling challenging tasks and roles Trying things out Consolidating, extending and refining skills Working with clients Several of these learning categories involve working closely with other people in a manner that creates opportunities for on-the-spot feedback to be given immediately or very quickly, and this has four important advantages. The first is that, in most situations of this kind, colleagues have a vested interest in the quality and quantity of each other's work. Second, both direct and indirect feedback are often a spontaneous part of the working relationship and given without stopping to think. Sometimes this can also be a disadvantage. Third, when there is a shared work setting, many things do not need to be explained, so it is easier and quicker to give feedback. Fourth, there is a greater possibility of incorporating tacit knowledge into the learning and the feedback. Working alongside a colleague for a period of time enables one not only to learn by asking questions and receiving feedback about shared activities and events as and when they happen, but also to pick up aspects of their situational understanding and ongoing monitoring and decision making that are largely tacit and beyond their powers of explanation (Eraut 2000, 2004). Moreover, comparing one's own work with that of a more experienced colleague often engenders formative self-evaluation. The immediacy of feedback can also be extended when the practitioners involved have had separate recent contacts with the same patient/client, or through the use of images or chemical data as ‘mediating objects’. Our research concluded that on-the-spot feedback is best provided through a system of de-centred support (Nielsen & Kvale 1997), where all professionals present regard supporting other people's learning as part of their role. Moreover, such feedback needs to be both supportive and constructive, and to help them reflect on their practice. In settings where such focused feedback is available, learning becomes part of everyday practice with consequent benefits for all concerned. Where it is not present, learners feel rudderless and became anxious about their long-term progress. One professional group for which this distributed apprenticeship is both feasible and highly desirable is hospital nursing. Newly qualified nurses need to acquire complex clinical and communication skills to a high level and to learn how to prioritize their workload; and both these competencies require on-the-spot rather than distant or delayed feedback. However, learning cultures often differ greatly between wards, even in the same hospital. In many wards nurses are more likely to receive negative feedback on one mistake, than positive feedback on everything they do well. Constructive feedback in areas where their performance is adequate but capable of being improved is most likely to occur when membership of a ward community provides access to significant social and emotional support. Hence, strong learning support and leadership from senior nurses is also necessary. Some ward managers understand that the best way to improve their skill mix and the quality of their collective care is for novices and those in the first promoted grade to develop their capabilities as rapidly as possible. Others do not see this as a form of investment in people, or are just too daunted by the problem of trying to implement it. Most early career professionals receive some informal feedback from their colleagues, but this does not necessarily provide much support for learning. The status of casual feedback, such as informal chats or passing comments at the end of the day, is uncertain. It enhances collegiality, but does not often seem like a considered piece of advice. The nature of the feedback, its timing and the way it is given, are all important, especially after emotionally draining situations when sympathetic support is vital for sustaining practitioners’ morale and commitment. More reflective discussions may follow later, ideally with a mentor or a clinical supervisor. 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