Feedback to Move Forward, Thrive, and Grow (20-21)

Feedback is one of the most powerful tools educators have to support student learning. When used thoughtfully, it can help students reflect on their progress, build confidence in their abilities, and take meaningful steps forward in their growth.

Across girls’ schools around the world, educators are continually exploring how feedback can be used more effectively to strengthen learning and deepen engagement. Through disciplined inquiry and collaboration with colleagues, ICGS research fellows identified practices that help students understand their learning, respond to challenges, and continue developing their skills.

Key takeaways from the studies provide important insights into how girls learn best:

Timeliness

The timeliness of feedback is critical for student growth and needs to be offered soon after an assignment is completed so students can apply new understanding to material quickly and nimbly.

Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is a vital component in seeing the value of feedback, knowing that it will build on students’ knowledge and skills, and will ultimately make a positive difference in their work.

Self-Reflection

A process whereby a student can bring the internal, often critical, self forward in a tangible manner to acknowledge and address. This tool also allows students a process by which to articulate their own learning process, which includes recognizing progress and determining the next steps.

Variety

With a variety of ways to share feedback, students can fully engage in what is most effective for them and embrace feedback as an empowering aspect of their learning, rather than simply a grade and end to their growth and understanding of a topic.

Feedback Dialogue

A feedback dialogue allows students to ask questions of their feedback, and then experience the power of applying feedback by seeing results in both the short and long terms.

Trusting Relationship

Exploring growth areas requires a level of vulnerability and thus a trusting relationship with their teachers and peers, setting the stage for increased receptivity to the feedback and enhancing positive learning outcomes.