How to Improve Feedback for All: New Perspectives, Practices, and Possibilities (Part 2)

Got Differentiated Feedback? Try Using Progress Guides to Support All Learners

Students, teachers, paraprofessionals, even guardians and parents need and deserve more nimble, right-sized, and easy-t0-understand tools to gauge young people’s progress in our schools. We know that authentic feedback-driven teaching and learning practices will include a host of visible, practical, and accessible ways to orient our children towards continuous improvement. Evaluating and supporting progress matters. Progress guides are part of the real work of fulfilling the hope for equity and excellence in schools and classrooms, as part of the right to learn (Darling-Hammond, 1996) in extraordinary times.

We’ve found while working with teachers during the pandemic in online, blended, and now face-to-face learning environments that progress guides are excellent supplements to well-designed analytic rubrics. Why? Because, by definition, these guides prioritize what is most important to focus on in a piece of student work or a performance–in which part or moment of the unit.

Today more than ever we need to engage and re-engage students in seeking and offering feedback as part of preparation for college and work. Twenty-first century ambitious teaching and deeper learning invites supporting student peer and self-assessment routines. From experience and recent research, we know that engaging our students in self-assessment routines–with progress guides–has multiple benefits.

In many cases, English learners (ELs) and students with special needs can benefit from a “less is more” approach. Rubrics can pose unnecessary barriers to learning how to learn; a progress guide offers a supportive on-ramp to help students gauge where the draft is and what may be next to improve it. Less extraneous verbiage means ELs and students with special needs can dedicate more time and resources to understanding next steps, the essence of formative feedback for all. Tools such as the progress guide focus on drafting, revising, and rethinking “the current work” rather than gaming “the system” for points.

English learners (ELs) and students with special needs can benefit from a “less is more” approach. Rubrics can pose unnecessary barriers to learning how to learn; a progress guide offers a supportive on-ramp to help students gauge where the draft is and what may be next to improve it.

Our solution to the problem of right-sized feedback in the field of classroom-based assessment—the use of progress guides and other graphic organizers—is simple without being simplistic. In our book, we discuss how to utilize progress guides for PBL, performance tasks, and all sorts of deep learning assessment designs to keep the focus on feedback loops rather than grades and points during instructional cycles. And we invite everyone to design their own progress guides in places that make sense for their own curriculum and classrooms–whether students are on the field, in the lab, at the table, or on stage.

For now, we note that a set of progress guides that align with a well-designed analytic rubric rooted in standards/learning criteria is a crucial feature of feedback-rich assessment and instructional design. We know formative feedback works when students are invited into the flow of the learning with footholds, checkpoints, and scaffolded processes that reveal both what is ahead and how far we’ve come.

Everyone needs visible markers and tools to improve.

Teachers, peers, and students themselves can mark progress and identify next steps in emerging learning trajectories. Progress guides must play a role in the process of defining what’s next as we work towards learning goals and most importantly, how to better communicate how to get there.

Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg are authors of Feedback for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: New Perspectives, Practices, and Possibilities.

Read Part 1 here 

References

Darling-Hammond, L. (1996). The right to learn and the advancement of teaching: Research, policy, and practice for democratic education. Educational Researcher, 25(6), 5–17.

Duckor, B. & Holmberg, C. (2017). Mastering formative assessment moves: 7 high-leverage practices to advance student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Duckor, B. & Holmberg, C. (2023). Feedback for continuous improvement in the classroom: New perspectives, practices, and possibilities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hattie, J., & Clarke, S. (2019). Visible learning feedback. Routledge.

Heritage, M. (2016). Assessment for learning: Co-regulation in and as student–teacher interaction. In D. Laveault & L. Allal (Eds.), Assessment for learning: Meeting the challenge of implementation (pp. 327–343). Springer.

Popham, W. J. (1997). What’s wrong—and what’s right—with rubrics. Educational Leadership, 55(2), 72.

Ramaprasad, A. (1983). On the definition of feedback. Behavioral Science, 28(1), 4–13.

Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 758–765.

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 11–16.