Feed Back
This wiki page describes how SOLO Taxonomy can be adapted for use with students and teachers to improve the effectiveness of feedback on how students are progressing towards an ILO. Other pages will explore “feed up” (where am I going?) and “feed forward” (what should I do next?).
| Feed Up | Feed Back | Feed Forward |
|---|---|---|
| Where am I going? | How am I going? | Where to next? |
| Appropriate, challenging and specific goals, Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO), Learning Intentions (LI). | Success criteria | Next steps. |
|
We are learning to ... (WALT), I am learning to ... (IALT) statements |
I will know I am successful when ..., My learning outcome is ...because ... |
My next step is to .... |
Feedback follows instruction. It is purposeful activity (undertaken by both teachers and students) designed to advise the achievement of an intended learning outcome (ILO).[1]
Feedback can be used to address declarative knowledge (knowing about things) and functioning knowledge (performance based on knowing about things) at the content level, process level, self-regulatory level and self level (Hattie, 2011, p177).
Feedback is at its most effective when it provides explicit, proximate and hierarchical prompts for achieving a desired learning goal.
- ‘explicit’ clarifies the meaning of the task needed to meet the ILO,
- ‘proximate’
- ‘hierarchical’ ensures the task provides challenge and advancement from existing understandings towards the ILO.
It seems plausible that when feedback fulfils these three criteria it gives agency to students by making the task seem achievable, and as a consequence the student may be more likely to increase effort (and/or use of effective strategies) to achieve the ILO.
The challenge for educators is always to find ways to improve their pedagogical content knowledge so as to make feedback between teachers and students (and between students and teachers) more effective: more explicit, proximal and/or hierarchical.
[1] New Zealand schools variously use Intended Learning Outcome (ILO) or Learning Intention (LI) to describe an identified learning goal.
