Search

The purpose of this article is to provide one prominent perspective from the research literature on a conception of feedback in educational psychology as proposed by John Hattie and colleagues, and to then adapt these concepts to develop a framework that can be applied in music performance teaching at a variety of levels. The article confronts what we see as a lack of understanding about the importance of this topic in music education and provides suggestions that will help music teachers refocus how they use feedback within their teaching. Throughout the article, we draw heavily on the work of John Hattie and his colleagues whose explanations on all facets of feedback, but especially those forms of feedback that are focused on ensuring students understand "where to next"-have had a huge impact on school education through various publications.

Feedback is powerful but variable. This study investigates which forms of feedback are more predictive of improvement to students’ essays, using Turnitin Feedback Studio–a computer augmented system to capture teacher and computer-generated feedback comments. The study used a sample of 3,204 high school and university students who submitted their essays, received feedback comments, and then resubmitted for final grading. The major finding was the importance of “where to next” feedback which led to the greatest gains from the first to the final submission. There is support for the worthwhileness of computer moderated feedback systems that include both teacher- and computer-generated feedback.

A meta-analysis (435 studies, k = 994, N > 61,000) of empirical research on the effects of feedback on student learning was conducted with the purpose of replicating and expanding the Visible Learning research (Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Hattie, 2009; Hattie and Zierer, 2019) from meta-synthesis. Overall results based on a random-effects model indicate a medium effect (d = 0.48) of feedback on student learning, but the significant heterogeneity in the data shows that feedback cannot be understood as a single consistent form of treatment. A moderator analysis revealed that the impact is substantially influenced by the information content conveyed. Furthermore, feedback has higher impact on cognitive and motor skills outcomes than on motivational and behavioral outcomes. We discuss these findings in the light of the assumptions made in The power of feedback (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). In general, the results suggest that feedback has rightly become a focus of teaching research and practice. However, they also point toward the necessity of interpreting different forms of feedback as independent measures.