Feedback Strategies

Feedback

I've actually been thinking a lot about feedback recently. I met with a women in my Chapter who had been really discouraged following some constructive criticism and I got to thinking about how I can give better feedback. I really enjoyed the article "How to Give Students Feedback that Will Actually Help Them" because it really outlined some constructive things that I can do better. One that I really liked was about giving specific feedback rather than general, vague responses. I feel like sometimes when I'm nervous to give criticism I hide it behind flowery words and elaborate language - but this is so not helpful! By hiding what I really mean I'm getting zero benefit - the person has no idea what they've done wrong and they don't benefit either because they can't fix what they don't know they're doing! I also liked the part that talked about being transparent. One of my favorite teachers in high school did this and it really impacted my learning experience! By outlining exactly what it took to do well - no questions, no guessing - she enabled all of us to reach out own academic goals!

The next article I read "Criticizing common criticisms of Praise" was honestly a total trip. The article has a lot of meat to it - it uses one paragraph to summarize several books worth of Valerie Strauss' arguments -  and I'm honestly not sure I understood all of it. The basic point Strauss is making (at least I think) is that she believes praise is bad because it exerts control. My initial reaction to this was pretty vehement denial - I'm a big believer in praise, I love giving it and I love receiving it. But as I thought about it I realized that at least a little bit of what Strauss says is true. Praise is usually given from a position of power to reinforce ideals that the more powerful person believes are relevant. Even I do this, when girls in my Chapter do things that represent behavior I value (helping others, being considerate of the facility, etc) I highlight them, which reinforces the idea that those are things that we should all be doing. While that doesn't seem like a bad thing, I can see how the concept of me deciding with my praise what behaviors are good is pretty judgmental and even powerful. While I'm not sure what the alternative to no praise is  - do we just not say anything at all? - this article has definitely given me a lot to think about!