Research School Network: BLOG: Part 2: Moving Away From Marking Policies: The Principles Behind Effective Feedback Part 2: The Principles Behind Effective Feedback. A case Study.

In June 2021, the Education Endowment Foundation published their guidance report on ​‘Teacher Feedback to improve pupil learning’. After reading the guidance and attending a ResearchEd talk by the authors Joe Collin and Alex Quigley, I resolved to implement the EEF’s findings in a new feedback policy for our school.

The guidance report sets out three key principles to keep at the heart of any feedback policy or any whole-school approach to giving feedback. The guidance is at great pains to make clear that adhering to these three principles is much more likely to be effective than prescribing exact timings or precise methods for feedback. It is recommended, therefore, that methods and timing should be left to a teacher’s professional judgement (and not specified in a policy).

The fundamental takeaway here is that the ​‘When?’ and How?’ to offer feedback is most appropriately answered by the teacher responding to the particular learning context of an individual pupil.

As John Hattie and Helen Timperley noted in their review of feedback, by its very definition, ​“Feedback can only build on something; it is of little use when there is no initial learning or surface information. Feedback is what happens second”. The first task of the teacher, before feedback is delivered, is to provide effective instruction.

Essentially, there are two reasons why lesson planning and delivery is such an intrinsic part of the feedback process. Firstly, more effective instruction will lead to a higher success rate of pupils learning and understanding the material, which will necessarily reduce the need for feedback to be given. Secondly, teachers need to know whether pupils have learned and understood the material in order to know a) if feedback is needed, and b) what
feedback is needed.

Asking the right questions and designing the right tasks means teachers will know what pupils have or have not learned and understood, and will thus be able to give more effective feedback. Teachers must therefore remain focused on formative assessment; teachers need to assess, and where insufficient progress is being made, they need to plan how to get pupils back on track.

The idea that finding out what pupils have understood from a lesson is an integral part of effective teaching is also put forward by Barak Rosenshine in his ​‘Principles of Effective Instruction’. Rosenshine lists ten key research-informed principles, which he argues underpin any effective approach to instruction in lessons. Among these, number 3​‘Ask questions’ and number 6​‘Check for student understanding’ explicitly set out how effective teachers must gather information about what their pupils have understood and have learned. Without this information, teachers are in no position to provide meaningful feedback.

In the Foreword to the EEF’s report, Dylan Wiliam sums this up most effectively: ​“The reason that effective feedback requires careful preparation is because the quality of feedback that a teacher can provide depends crucially on the quality of the evidence about learners’ achievement that is available. If a teacher cannot think of what to say to a student — having seen the student’s work — then the fault is most likely that the questions, task, or activities that were assigned were not designed with a view to giving feedback in the first place. The starting point for effective feedback is eliciting the right evidence.”

The second of the guidance report’s three main principles is that teaching staff should deliver appropriately timed feedback that focusses on moving learning forward. The report goes on to clarify: ​“There is not one clear answer for when feedback should be provided. Rather, teachers should judge whether more immediate or delayed feedback is required, considering the characteristics of the task set, the individual pupil, and the collective understanding of the class. Feedback should focus on moving learning forward, targeting the specific learning gaps that pupils exhibit. Specifically, high quality feedback may focus on the task, subject, and self-regulation strategies.

Perhaps more obvious, but nonetheless pertinent to ensure all staff remain aware of is: ​“Feedback that focuses on a learner’s personal characteristics, or feedback that offers only general and vague remarks, is less likely to be effective.”

In terms of ​“appropriately timed feedback”, it is useful here to distinguish between three different times at which feedback can be given. These can be termed immediate feedback (feedback at the point of teaching), summary feedback (given at the end of the task or lesson or at the start of the next lesson) and review feedback (feedback given away from the point of teaching).

The EEF themselves concede and are at pains to emphasise that the evidence regarding the timing and frequency of effective feedback is inconclusive. While it is offered in the report that on the one hand immediate feedback may be effective as it could prevent misconceptions from forming early on, it is also suggested that delayed feedback could be beneficial as it may force pupils to fully engage with the work before giving an answer, which in turn may lead to pupils working harder to retrieve previously learned material, which in turn may lead to more of the information being retained in the long-term memory and, therefore, ​“learned”.

In his ​‘Impact’ journal article on effective feedback, Michael Chiles summarises how different research studies have produced conflicting views. While some studies (Soderstrom and Bjork – 2014) support the idea that delaying feedback is more beneficial for long-term learning, others (Phye and Anderson – 1989) argue that efficient retention is more likely to result from earlier, more immediate feedback. Chiles explains that this divergence in opinion led Corbett and Anderson in 2001 to ascertain that the effectiveness of immediate versus delayed feedback is likely to be determined by the task. The premise is that immediate feedback can be more effective for developing procedural skills, whereas delaying feedback can be more beneficial when learning is being transferred into new contexts.

One important point to note at this juncture is the need to ensure that all staff who are involved in giving feedback to pupils at different times are aware of the distinction between ​‘performance’ and ​‘learning’. To take the definition given by Sweller et al in 2011, ​“Learning is defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.” Similarly, in the Learning Encyclopaedia of Educational Research, Richard Mayer defines learning as ​“the relatively permanent change in a person’s knowledge or behaviour due to experience.”

We must remain mindful that what we are likely to see during a lesson is more performance than learning. Performance is what we can see and measure – the work our pupils produce following our input or instruction. Learning is a process that takes place in the mind as information is transferred to the long-term memory, and is therefore extremely difficult to directly observe. As David Didau writes in his blog on the definition of learning, ​“What students can do in a lesson – or in response to feedback – tells us very little about what they might be able to do at another time and in another context.” A definition of learning – DavidDidau(learningspy.co.uk)

Consequently, teachers who only ever give immediate feedback at the point of learning are less likely to be relaying information based on what their pupils have actually learned – that is to say, what has actually changed a pupil’s long-term memory.

In summary, and in the words of Clare Sealy, ​“New knowledge is fragile and usually forgotten unless explicit steps are taken over time to revisit and refresh learning. Teachers should be wary of assuming that children have securely understood material based on evidence drawn close to the point of teaching it. Therefore, teachers will need to get feedback at some distance from the original teaching input when assessing if learning is now secure.”

Compared to the timing of feedback, the evidence around what to focus feedback on offers a clearer message. Feedback should focus on moving learning forward, targeting the specific learning gap identified by the teacher, and ensuring that a pupil improves. The other important aspect of the second principle in the EEF’s guidance report is the recommendation that feedback focuses strictly on one of three things: the particular task the pupil has undertaken, the underlying processes related to a specific subject or a pupil’s self-regulation.

Helpfully, the report goes on to provide concrete examples of what each of these might look like in each key stage from 1 – 4. Task-based feedback is focused on improving a specific piece of work or a particular type of task. Subject-based feedback targets the underlying processes in a task, which are used across a subject, meaning the feedback can be used across subsequent tasks in the same subject. Feedback on self-regulation often takes the form of prompts and cues and is aimed at improving a pupil’s ability to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning themselves.

The following table from the guidance report shows suggestions for how these three areas of focus for feedback might be applied in KS1 and KS2.

The report acknowledges that it may often be difficult to distinguish clearly between these different types of feedback and that the lines between them may be blurred. The key distinction to make is to ensure that feedback is directed towards the task, subject, and/​or self-regulation — it is less likely to be effective if it provides a general comment about the pupil’s characteristics.

The third principle listed by the EEF is to plan for how pupils will receive and use feedback. The guidance report explains that ​“Careful thought should be given to how pupils receive feedback. Pupil motivation, self-confidence, their trust in their teacher and their capacity to receive information can impact feedback’s effectiveness. Teachers should, therefore, implement strategies that encourage learners to welcome feedback and should monitor whether pupils are using it. Teachers should also provide opportunities for pupils to use feedback. Only then will the feedback loop be closed so that learning can progress.”

As teachers, we have to be aware that there is a difference between the feedback we give, and the feedback a pupil receives, and that no matter how skilful our delivery of feedback, it may just be rejected.

In his article on teacher feedback in the Chartered College’s ​‘Impact’ journal, Michael Chiles argues that pupils would largely rather be perceived as lazy than stupid, and cites David Didau’s suggestion that effort is thought to be flexible, whereas intelligence is fixed. Thus, for many pupils, getting something wrong because they haven’t bothered is superior to getting something wrong because they haven’t understood.

We must therefore create a climate and culture where pupils want to receive feedback, and want to act on it: strong relationships, trust, a culture where making mistakes is part of the learning process, pupils’ belief that what they are learning is important – these can all support willingness to receive feedback and act upon it. Additionally, to create what Chiles refers to as a ​‘feedback pull’, pupils need to know that next steps are within their reach. A critique of an essay or passage of writing where the next steps or suggested improvements are too broad or beyond the grasp of the pupil will only result in the feedback being dismissed, and if feedback is not acted on, it is much less likely to be effective.

The EEF recommends a variety of potential strategies for how teachers might prepare their pupils for receiving feedback: discussing the purpose of feedback and explaining why it is being given, modelling the use of feedback and sharing examples of pupils who have improved their work due to feedback as pupils may be more willing to accept and use feedback if their peers are too, providing feedback that is clear concise and focused, and ensuring that pupils understand the feedback.

Teachers must also ensure that time is planned for pupils to use the feedback they are given so that learning is moved forward. Dylan Wiliam’s analogy of feedback as a windscreen, not a rear-view mirror is useful for thinking of feedback as a ​“recipe for future action” – it should impact future work a pupil will undertake.


The overwhelming majority of teachers are well aware of this already, but time constraints and the pressures of squeezing in an already bloated curriculum mean that despite good intentions, a lack of time is still a significant barrier to pupils effectively using feedback given.

So, in summary, the EEF advocates feedback policies which prioritise three key principles above any particular methods – lay the foundations for effective feedback, deliver appropriately timed feedback that focuses on moving learning forward, and plan for how pupils will receive and use feedback.

Join us for part 3 next week where Mark shares, the report in practice, sharing his feedback methods, policy, impact and next steps.

In the meantime, you can sign up to our primary and secondary feedback short course programmes below.