3 Reasons Traditional Feedback Fails
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why traditional feedback formats like warm/cool feedback and the feedback sandwich consistently fail to improve teaching practice.
Key Takeaways
- Three conditions must be met for feedback to work - It must be accurate, welcomed by the recipient, and sufficient to enable actual change
- The capacity gap is the real problem - Even when feedback is correct and well-received, teachers often lack the underlying capacity to implement changes
- Surface-level tips aren't enough - Changing visible teaching behaviors doesn't build the deeper capacity needed for sustainable improvement
- The feedback sandwich undermines itself - The compliment-suggestion-compliment format makes both praise and constructive feedback feel less genuine
- Learning beats advising - When leaders learn more about a teacher's practice, they can provide more meaningful support than just offering tips
Transcript
The problem with traditional feedback on teaching, warm and cool feedback, wows and wonders, positive and negative, is that there are a lot of things that have to go right for that feedback to work.
And most of the time, we can't really guarantee that those conditions are in place.
So most of the time, feedback does not work.
In order for feedback to work, A, it has to be correct feedback, right?
It has to be actually good feedback that's based on good evidence.
It has to be good advice.
Second, it has to be welcomed by the recipient, right?
Like if you get feedback that you don't want, you're probably not going to change your practice because of it.
So it has to be received well.
Third, it has to be enough.
And this is where I think we have somewhat unrealistic expectations when it comes to our feedback.
We can have accurate feedback, we can have feedback that the teacher appreciates, like it would be good feedback, but it is not necessarily enough to actually change practice.
Like if you advise me to flap my wings and fly, That feedback might be helpful.
It might sound good to me.
I might want to do that, but I can't actually flap my wings and fly.
And I feel like that's often where we fall flat in our feedback.
We want things to be different in someone's practice, but just doing the surface features, doing the visible things, behaviors of teaching differently doesn't actually give somebody the capacity to be different.
So I'm of the belief that a lot of feedback actually works best in the other direction, right?
Like when we learn more about someone's practice, we learn more about what they need to improve other than just our advice, right?
Like if people could do better at something, they would.
They don't necessarily just need a tip.
They need something that builds their capacity.
So we're gonna talk about this next week on a webinar.
I hope you can join me.
It is a free webinar.
It's called Feedback Fail, Why Traditional Feedback Falls Flat and How We Can Fix It.
Go to principalcenter.com slash fail to sign up.
I would love to see you there.
And I would love to remove from the profession this feedback sandwich idea.
The idea that all feedback needs to be a compliment and then a suggestion for improvement and then another compliment.
That's the traditional feedback sandwich that virtually all administrators give to teachers virtually every time they are in classrooms.
And it's just an artificial format, right?
Like there's nothing inherently wrong with the fact that it's an artificial format.
but it doesn't work.
And it gives the impression that like probably the compliments aren't genuine and the feedback, like the suggestion in the middle, maybe that's not really serious.
Like, I just feel like we rely so heavily on that format.
We never stop and question whether it works.
So we're going to talk about some better ways to give feedback on Wednesday's webinar, principalcenter.com slash fail.
And I will see you on the feedback fail webinar.