Effective Feedback: Clear Evidence, Opportunities for Action, and Timely Delivery

The topic of feedback is perpetually relevant and consistently challenging. We know its impact on student learning, and so, every year, our professional learning team revisits the topic, seeking improved ways to support educators.

And we're not alone! Across the last few months, multiple schools have reached out to us seeking support in feedback best practices. What we're hearing are shared concerns: From teachers of the youngest learners to those working with graduating seniors, we're being asked similar questions: How might we refine our practices to ensure that students actually use the feedback? How do we set up systems that allow for students to return to feedback? And perhaps most fundamentally, do we have shared understanding? Are we all talking about the same thing when we discuss effective feedback?

These conversations have generated a responsive framework addressing these concerns and others, including manageability of feedback practices and actual impact on student learning. (For more information on developing responsive programming for your team, complete this form. For educators at GOA member schools, check out November’s edition of the PLaybook for a slidedeck resource that you can use with your team.)

What matters in feedback is enduring. For years, when defining feedback, we have shared quotes from Grant Wiggins emphasizing two important takeaways:

1. Feedback is information to be used. It is neutral, in that it is not always corrective or praising. It serves to identify next steps.

2. Those next steps situate feedback as a part of a learning process. It does not help to receive feedback at the end of a journey. It must offer opportunities for continued growth and application during learning experiences.

As we can imagine, not all information is especially helpful to us in our learning processes. A check mark does not offer as much of a next step to us as a suggestion to revisit a lesson about conjugating verbs again. Likewise, paragraphs of feedback on every consideration to correct in an essay can be overwhelming and distract learners from clarity on learning goals. Grant Wiggins shares that the seven keys to effective feedback include being timely, tangible and transparent, user-friendly, goal-referenced, actionable, consistent, and ongoing.

Through our own experiences and having worked with thousands of educators, we know that no one disagrees with these seven elements. The concerns about implementing effective feedback practices are related to clarity, next steps, and the burden of limited time. How might we offer targeted, effective feedback with the time we have, for each of our students, with the frequency that they need and provide systems that ensure they use it, return to it, and learn from it?

Both a memorable acronym and a helpful approach, the EAT framework - Evidence, Action, and Time - is grounded in the definition of effective feedback, incorporates key insights from various feedback models, and remains both practical and impactful:

The first step in providing feedback that truly is information for learning is ensuring you have clear evidence of student learning. This means identifying and communicating the specific learning outcomes and criteria prior to the learning experience.

While clearly articulated learning criteria, or EVIDENCE for learning, is a best practice across grade levels and contexts, how educators communicate that learning criteria might look different. We know teachers have tools in place to support clarity on learning criteria. From single-point rubrics to checklists to pre-reflections, we have a lot to learn from educators and In our work across schools, we aim to make visible different approaches to evidence so that colleagues can borrow and build upon one another’s ideas. We're finding case study snapshots helpful conversation starters for naming what works in feedback and for surfacing what we can borrow from one another. Take this example:

A middle school teacher is beginning a unit on economic principles. They plan for students to demonstrate their understanding via short quizzes, class discussions, and a project. While the modes of demonstration will be different, the learning criteria will remain the same. How might they launch the unit with a shared understanding of the learning targets?

How would your teams respond? What practical tools are helping you name your EVIDENCE for learning in ways that students know and understand them?

Once the evidence of learning is clear, the next step is providing feedback that drives actions. Feedback should guide next steps and focus on helping students improve their future performance, rather than serving to justify a grade. When students receive feedback, how does it drive next steps? How does it lead to growth? In our work in schools, we’re inviting educators to share their systems for returning to feedback, their modes for students reflecting on feedback, and their frameworks for writing feedback so that students clearly see the “next time, TRY THIS.” Consider this case study:

A 10th grade physics teacher implementing peer reviews of lab reports noticed students were providing vague or overly positive feedback that wasn't helping learning. To address this, the teacher is hoping to coach students in using sentence starters that promote feedback that students can use. What are some feedback frameworks or helpful sentence stems this educator could try?

How would your teams respond? What practical frameworks, like “I like, I wish, and I wonder” are you using to empower students to share feedback that leads to actions? How can we share those across colleagues to make both our teacher-to-student feedback and student-to-student feedback more actionable?

Feedback matters. It offers a touch point for cultivating connections with students, it allows educators to personalize learning experiences, it guides ongoing learning, AND…it takes a lot of time. The final piece of the EAT framework is ensuring feedback happens in a timely and ongoing manner while also ensuring it’s manageable, sustainable, and as teacher-friendly as it is student-friendly.

Manageable and ongoing feedback means small shifts. These might look like planning intentionally for diversifying feedback, redesigning how we build in self-assessment and reflection, and scaffolding protocols for effective peer feedback aligned to learning criteria. Systems like GOA’s feedback ecosystem synthesize what we’re hearing from teachers is working and invites educators to plan for feedback in similar ways they plan for learning experiences, gaining time and creating more impactful, micro-feedback opportunities in the process. Consider this scenario and the feedback moves you’d recommend:

A Spanish language teacher ends each week reviewing and assessing student videos in which they demonstrate the week’s vocabulary and concepts. Providing individual feedback is taking hours. Additionally, when the copious amount of written feedback is handed back to the class, they quickly scan it for a grade. How might they save teacher time while offering more frequent and actionable feedback?

We know feedback has an enormous impact on learning, and we know the challenges are complex. Discussing the EAT framework won't solve every feedback need, but it gives us a practical lens for improvement and concrete starting points for teams to share ideas and to make visible the moves that are working for them. It also clarifies what really matters: E: What are we actually hoping students learn? A: How will they use the feedback? T: What will maximize time and increase feedback frequency?

We’re so grateful to get to learn from schools in our GOA community. We've seen how this approach invites conversations and small shifts to create more effective, sustainable feedback practices. It reminds us that feedback isn't about measurement - it's about empowering student growth through clear evidence, opportunities for action, and timely delivery.

Want to learn more about the feedback ecosystem and approaches to the EAT framework? Reach out to our professional learning team to start the conversation.

For more, see:

• Building a Culture of Feedback in Schools: Strategies, Tools, and Best Practices

• Creating Spaces for Dialogue That Matters: World Cafe

• Designing for Educators as Learners: Belonging, Flexibility and Relevance

GOA is a nonprofit learning organization that reimagines learning to empower students and educators worldwide. In partnership with our global network of 150 schools, we provide interactive, relationship-driven courses, expert resources, and innovative thinking that help to expand and elevate academic programs. Together, we help students and educators become open to the extraordinary.

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