Specific Feedback and Praise

One powerful way that we can intervene as a teacher is by being careful about how we give students praise. Offering praise for students' work and efforts that could help students to begin to view their own intelligence as something that can be developed.

Positive evaluating factors will nourish students power to reach their high goals by equipping them with tools to overcome challenging obstacles while negative agents will discourage learners from trying to acquire their high aims. One of the major role in increasing students` performance is the feedback they get from their teachers. Feedback is a crucial element in the learning process.

The importance of feedback glows out of its ability to focus students` attention to specific details of the mistakes they have created. Feedback establishes students confidence and, consequently, clarify their vision about the errors they make.The kind of feedback which gives the best benefits is detailed comments. Even more important, feedback comments are preferable to be "comprehensive" and deals with logic explanations (Sendziuk, 2010).

According to black and William "descriptive " feedback guides to high levels of performance development (Lipnevich, and Smith, 2009). The response student obtain from their instructors encourage learners to benefit in the process of correcting mistakes and/or digging deeper in the information that student has to improve his/her performance and achieve higher scores.

Praising students with specific feedback is directly affect student's beliefs about why they succeed or fail, it leads to increased persistence, self evaluation, intrinsic motivation and increased learning and higher achievement.

Let's see the following examples of Ineffective and effective Praises with feedback using the StoryboardThat comic strips:

Scenario #1   

Ineffective praise: Using Global positive reaction such as "This is A+ Lab Report", The teacher did not specify how student has attained specific performance standard.

Effective Praise: The teacher used specific, descriptive feedback so student could understand what she exactly did in her lab report to be given this praise that could help to keep and improve her high performance.

Scenario #2

Ineffective Praise: The teacher was checking students journal at the beginning of science class to see their notes and put grades, Sam is student who took good notes, the teacher told him "Nice job with your note taking Sam!" The teacher here used the praise describing students present accomplishment without comparing or explaining how his notes were being improved. 

Effective Praise: Recognition is more effective when teacher compare Sam's present accomplishment with his past accomplishment so student would be more intrinsically motivated when their academic growth or performance is the focus of praise. 

 

Scenario #3

Ineffective Praise: Student has done his Brain Cell model that has been assigned by the teacher last week, Carla had worked hard on that and got the good level related to the cell model rubric. The teacher was not setting high expectation for Carla, she just mentioned it was a good cell model and liked it.

Effective Praise: Students need to know that their efforts what cause their success and use praise to link the outcome of this assignment to student's effort and give some suggestions to work on it to reach the excellent level that shows the teacher is setting high expectation for the student which has a positive impact on student's performance.

"How we talk to our students about their performances and work products affects their mindsets. Feedback for intelligence increases fixed mindset thinking; feedback for effort and strategies decreases it."

References:

1. Using Praise to Enhance Student Resilience and Learning Outcomes. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/education/k12/using-praise.aspx on February 9,2017.

2. Effective and Ineffective feedback and praise. Retrieved from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Effective-And-Ineffective-Feedback-Grades-And-53613107.html on February 9,2017.