by Jessica To, NIE
Engaging students with feedback is crucial for
productive feedback processes. To fulfil this mission, teachers devote time and
energy to providing written comments on students’ work and arranging
after-school individual consultations. Disappointingly, not all students
approach their teachers after reading the feedback “Please come to see me to
discuss your essay”. Even if some attend the consultation meetings, they may be
passive and seldom take initiative to discuss their problems. Under such
circumstances, students are blamed for lack of motivation for feedback uptake.
This may be partially true. However, this may also signify their lack of trust
in feedback providers. Defined by Tschannen-Moran (2004), trust is “one’s
willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other
is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent” (pp.19-20). Trust
deserves educators’ attention because it is the cornerstone of dialogic
feedback processes. Without trust in feedback providers, students may be
reluctant to accept critiques, discuss learning difficulties and seek
assistance from teachers and peers. This article explains the importance of
trust in feedback engagement and recommends strategies to foster trust in
dialogic feedback.
The role of trust in feedback engagement
Trust plays a pivotal role in effective feedback
communication because it impacts on students’ engagement with feedback. Two
types of trust are pertinent to feedback engagement: communication trust and
competence trust. Communication trust refers to the beliefs in a person’s
willingness to conduct sincere communication, tell the truth and give negative
feedback with good purpose (Carless, 2013). This type of trust is fundamental
for teacher-student feedback exchanges since students would be more
psychologically ready to participate in a dialogue if they believe their
teachers hold them in respect and would not treat their inadequacies with
contempt. Competence trust denotes the beliefs in a person’s ability to produce
quality and useful feedback (Carless, 2013). This type of trust is essential
for peer feedback exchanges as a certain number of students have reservations
about the accuracy of peer comments and therefore are not eager to take part in
peer review activities.
The absence of trust could have repercussions
for students’ feedback engagement. If they lack communication trust in
teachers, they may perceive negative feedback on work performance as offensive
personal remarks (Carless, 2006). This not only affects teacher-student
relationships but also leads to students’ refusal to enact the feedback
received. Furthermore, in a distrust-stricken environment, they may be less
willing to discuss inadequacies in feedback dialogue for fear that exposing
weaknesses to teachers may affect teacher evaluation of performance (Yan &
Brown, 2017). The dearth of competence trust could discourage them from using
peer feedback for academic self-regulation if they doubt the usefulness of peer
comments (Panadero, 2016).
In view of the importance of trust, it is
imperative for educators to enhance communication and competence trust in
feedback exchanges. Table 1 below summarises the definition of communication
trust and competence trust and outlines the strategies for trust building.
Table 1
Strategies for trust building
· Setting a scene for candid
feedback exchanges
Teachers could set the
scene by stating the aim of feedback discussion and setting expectations at the
outset of dialogue as follows:
Example 1 Setting a scene for candid feedback discussion
Students’ anxiety about feedback discussion could be relieved if
they are clear about the purpose of the discussion and could see the value of
an open discussion of problems and weaknesses.
· Co-constructing feedback with
students
Feedback co-construction
involves teachers and students taking mutual responsibility for crafting
feedback messages. As shown in example 2 below, this could be achieved by
students making their feedback requests, followed by their teacher’s response
to their needs.
Example 2 Feedback co-construction
Allowing students to
articulate feedback needs would be helpful for investing their trust in
feedback interaction. When they know their feedback requests are accommodated
seriously by teacher, they would be more motivated to discuss their weaknesses
and would be psychologically ready to accept criticisms (To, 2021). The
prerequisite for feedback co-construction is students’ capability to
self-assess performance and identify their own learning challenges.
· Empathy and attentive
listening
Students’ psychological
safety could be enhanced if teachers demonstrate empathy and attentive
listening in their response to students’ feedback requests or explanation of
learning difficulties. Illustrated by example 3, a teacher could show his / her
understanding of the student’s difficulties and share his / her previous
learning experience in the response.
Example 3 Demonstrating empathy and attentive listening in feedback dialogue
When students feel
teacher’s sincerity, they would be more willing to discuss their learning
difficulties in the conversation. The atmosphere of sincerity could be further
reinforced if teachers demonstrate the sympathetic attitude in regular
classroom interaction (Carless, 2013).
Strategies to develop competence trust
Given students’ prime concern about the quality of peer feedback,
competence trust could be developed through peer feedback training and a
quality check on peer feedback.
· Peer feedback
training
Peer feedback training could be incorporated into pedagogical
activities to increase students’ capability to make academic judgements and
construct peer comments. For example, prior to peer review activities, students
could grade two to three exemplars of varied quality based on their
understanding of assessment criteria and write comments to justify their
evaluative decisions. Then, they could exchange their evaluative judgements and
reasoning with teacher in a plenary session. Through the interaction, they
could notice the judgement gaps and refine their initial understanding of
quality. Teachers could also discuss with students the components of effective
and ineffective peer feedback and demonstrate how to transform the ineffective
feedback into effective ones.
· Quality check on
peer feedback
Teacher monitoring of the effectiveness of peer feedback could be
achieved by different means. Inspired by Han and Xu (2020), teachers could
collect peer feedback forms at the end of peer review and provide feedback on a
random selection of peer comments with the aim of mediating students’
evaluative judgements. Alternatively, teachers could streamline the monitoring
process using online platforms. For instance, when students post drafts for a
collaborative writing project on Wiki or Google Classroom, teachers could have
access to their drafts and peer feedback and offer input to refine the quality
of peer comments during task engagement (Woo et al., 2013).
In conclusion, this article has examined the
role of trust in feedback processes and has outlined some strategies to foster
communication trust in teacher-student feedback exchanges and competence trust
in peer feedback interaction. With a richer understanding of trust in feedback
engagement, educators would be in a better position to design and implement
effective feedback to enhance students’ engagement.
References
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