Teacher Feedback in Beginning and Intermediate

At all levels of teaching, feedback is a crucial component in helping students understand their current abilities and how they can improve. In this study, we employed a conceptual framework developed by Hattie and Timperley to investigate the use of different types of feedback in piano lessons for beginning and intermediate students. We investigated the use of feedback by a sample of certified piano teachers ( N = 4) and their students ( N = 8) across five consecutive lessons (a total of 40 lessons for the 8 students). Results indicated that 75.6% of all teacher comments were “Feed-Back,” (focused on responding to performance) with far fewer comments focused on “Feed-Forward” (focused on future performance, 22.1%) and “Feed-Up” (focused on performance goals, 2.3%). Task-level comments accounted for approximately 80% of the feedback, compared with Process-level comments (17.3%) and Self-Regulation comments (2.5%), respectively. Intermediate-level students received less Task feedback (66.3%) than beginning students (72.1%) but received more Process feedforward (14.9%). A slight decrease in Task feedback was observed as students approached their examinations. Discussion of these results includes comparisons with previous research employing this framework and suggestions for improving teachers’ abilities to provide relevant, information-rich, and effective feedback to their students.