A teacher who has four sons noticed that when his youngest son took over lawn duty, he became defensive after receiving feedback on his work. This reaction is not uncommon in students, who may feel that their effort, ability, or worth is being questioned when they receive feedback.
Research on what Yeager et al. (2014) call wise feedback offers some helpful insight into how students can be helped to move beyond feeling criticized and begin using feedback to become better learners. Students are more likely to accept and act on feedback when it communicates two things: high standards and a genuine belief in their ability to meet those standards.
One approach to helping students receive feedback is to acknowledge the emotional side of feedback. Fong and Schallert (2023) explore the motivational and emotional dimensions of feedback, highlighting the importance of understanding how students experience and respond to it. Ignoring those emotional responses doesn’t make them disappear, and a student who feels embarrassed or discouraged may have a difficult time focusing on the suggestions that could help them improve.
Building a Culture Around Growth
Teachers should work to build a classroom culture in which mistakes are viewed as a natural part of learning rather than evidence that a student isn’t very good at something. Learners who believe their intelligence and abilities are fixed may interpret corrections as a judgment of their potential rather than their performance.
Cultivating Growth Mindset
Dweck and Yeager (2019) explain that growth-mindset interventions are most powerful when they are embedded in the broader classroom culture rather than treated as a one-time lesson or motivational activity. Teachers can be more intentional about the language they use, focusing on the student’s growth and the strategies that helped make it happen rather than simply telling a student that they did excellent or are smart.
For example, instead of saying, “You did excellent,” a teacher might say, “Look how much stronger your evidence is in this draft than it was in your first one.” This kind of language helps students see that learning is a process of developing knowledge and skills, and that feedback is an opportunity to improve.
Making mistakes a normal part of classroom conversations can also help students view feedback as less threatening. Teachers can take a few minutes during a warm-up to examine a common error, discuss why it happens, and work together to correct it. When students see that everyone – including their teacher – has things to learn, feedback becomes a little less intimidating.
Another approach is to make feedback specific and actionable. Effective feedback identifies what a student has done, how that work compares with the intended learning goal, and what the student can do to improve. Wisniewski, Zierer, and Hattie (2020) highlight the importance of informative feedback that helps learners understand their performance and move toward mastery.
One simple approach is to use the Plus-One Step: whenever a teacher identifies an important area for improvement, they also identify one specific action the student can take. For example, instead of telling a student to “Explain your answer better,” a teacher might suggest, “Add one sentence explaining your thought process.”
Teaching students how to use feedback is also important. Carless and Winstone (2023) highlight the need for student feedback literacy, or a set of capacities that help learners understand, evaluate, and use feedback to improve their work. These capacities don’t develop automatically, and students need opportunities to practice.
Teaching Feedback Literacy
Fortunately, teachers can build those opportunities into the work students are already doing. One approach is to model how to use a scoring criteria or a rubric. Before students submit an assignment, they can highlight sections of their work that meet specific criteria in one color and areas that may need attention in another.
This approach encourages students to examine their work through the same lens the teacher will use when providing feedback. Well-modeled and monitored peer feedback is another useful opportunity. Rather than simply asking students to swap work and make suggestions, teachers can provide sentence starters that help them offer specific, constructive comments.
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For instance, students can use prompts like “One place you could strengthen your point is…” or “I wasn’t sure what you meant when…” to focus on the work itself rather than simply offering vague praise or criticism. Teachers can also ask students to identify the kind of feedback they want or need before submitting an assignment.
Students may be unsure about a particular part of the work or trying to improve a specific skill. Encouraging students to ask for feedback helps them take a more active role in their learning. The more opportunities students have to interpret, discuss, and apply feedback, the better prepared they’ll be to use it independently.
Encouraging Reflection and Self-Assessment
One of the most useful things teachers can do for their students is help them become more aware of their own learning. Instead of making feedback something that happens only after the teacher examines an assignment, teachers can encourage students to reflect on their work before and after receiving suggestions.
Silver et al. (2023) emphasize the role of reflection and metacognition in improving student learning across disciplines. When students think about what they know, what they’re struggling with, and how they might improve, they become more active participants in the learning process.
Reflecting on Feedback
A simple way to get started is with a Feedback Cover Sheet. When students submit an assignment, they can respond to two questions: “The part of this assignment I feel most proud of is…” and “The specific area I’d like your feedback on is…”
These questions encourage students to recognize their strengths and identify areas where they could benefit from additional guidance – while they’re directly engaged in doing it. When the teacher returns the assignment, they can ask students to respond to one more question: “The main change I plan to make based on the feedback I received is…”
This last suggestion is particularly important because it asks students to move beyond reading comments and begin making decisions about how to use them. Teachers might even have students revisit their responses after revising their work to see what changed, which suggestions they used, and what they learned about their own strengths and weaknesses.
Over time, these kinds of small reflection activities can help students become more thoughtful about their work and more independent in deciding what to do next. Feedback doesn’t do much good if it arrives at the end of a learning experience when students have little opportunity, or motivation, to use it.
Revision and Resubmission
One way to address this is to build regular opportunities for feedback, revision, and resubmission into instruction. For larger projects, teachers can try a feedback cycle, where students submit an initial draft, receive feedback, make revisions, and then submit an updated version.
If appropriate, the cycle can be repeated. The goal is to make the improvement process an expected part of completing the assignment rather than an optional activity for students who want to raise their grades. Teachers can also ask students to submit a brief Change Log with their revised work.
In it, they identify where they made changes in response to earlier feedback and explain why they made those decisions. This gives students an opportunity to demonstrate not only what they changed but also what they learned in the process, and it gives teachers a clearer picture of whether their feedback is actually helping students improve.
