In our educational landscape, feedback is a constant. Teachers spend their days guiding students, praising achievements, and correcting mistakes. This feedback extends beyond students to colleagues, administrators, and even within peer interactions among students. The school experience often feels like an ongoing feedback session, aiming for improvement while others point out how to achieve it. However, this process isn’t always effective.

Feedback in education predominantly dwells on past performances, often overlooking the future growth potential of students. This backward-looking approach can sometimes demotivate students by making them feel stuck in their past mistakes. Many teachers are inundated with feedback from various sources, and find themselves in a cycle of reviewing what went wrong, rather than what could go right. This can stifle creativity and hinder the development of a growth mindset in our students.

The continuous cycle of traditional feedback can have deeper implications. It can lead to a mental shutdown, as described by Joe Hirsch in his book The Feedback Fix. Negative feedback, according to Hirsch, focusing on past errors, floods our brains with stress hormones, putting us on the defensive and impairing our decision-making abilities. This approach not only affects students but also impacts educators and their inter-collegial relationships by creating an environment of apprehension rather than growth.

Feedforward

Feedforward, introduced by Marshall Goldsmith and explored by Hirsch, shifts the focus from the past to the future. This approach is not about rating past performance but about nurturing future development. For instance, in the classroom, instead of waiting to mark errors on a completed essay, a teacher using feedforward would engage with the student during the writing process, offering insights and encouraging future improvement. We recommend taking a few minutes to watch the video (7:37) below in which Goldsmith summarizes the feedforward approach.

The transition from feedback to feedforward in educational settings can be transformative. Feedforward opens avenues for positive and lasting improvements and fosters an environment where students and educators view themselves not just as they are, but as they could become. It's a shift towards a more constructive, forward-thinking approach that promises to revolutionize teacher-student engagement.

Call to Action

As educators and school leaders, let's embrace the concept of feedforward. If you haven’t already, download the FREE Edvative Learning EDI Card Deck to access even more researched-based teaching strategies, access our FREE EDI course, and consider joining the Edvative Learning PLC where we discuss concepts like Feedforward with passionate educators like you on a weekly basis.