Focus on Formative Feedback

Research Report Focus on Formative Feedback Valerie J. Shute Research & Development March 2007 RR-07-11 Focus on Formative Feedback Valerie J. Shute ETS, Princeton, NJ March 2007 As part of its educational and social mission and in fulfilling the organization`s nonprofit charter and bylaws, ETS has and continues to learn from and also to lead research that furthers educational and measurement research to advance quality and equity in education and assessment for all users of the organization`s products and services. ETS Research Reports provide preliminary and limited dissemination of ETS research prior to publication. To obtain a PDF or a print copy of a report, please visit: http://www.ets.org/research/contact.html Copyright © 2007 by Educational Testing Service. All rights reserved. ETS and the ETS logo are registered trademarks of Educational Testing Service (ETS). Abstract This paper reviews the corpus of research on feedback, with a particular focus on formative feedback—defined as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify the learner’s thinking or behavior for the purpose of improving learning. According to researchers in the area, formative feedback should be multidimensional, nonevaluative, supportive, timely, specific, credible, infrequent, and genuine (e.g., Brophy, 1981; Schwartz & White, 2000). Formative feedback is usually presented as information to a learner in response to some action on the learner’s part. It comes in a variety of types (e.g., verification of response accuracy, explanation of the correct answer, hints, worked examples) and can be administered at various times during the learning process (e.g., immediately following an answer, after some period of time has elapsed). Finally, there are a number of variables that have been shown to interact with formative feedback’s success at promoting learning (e.g., individual characteristics of the learner and aspects of the task). All of these issues will be discussed in this paper. This review concludes with a set of guidelines for generating formative feedback. Key words: Assessment, formative feedback, directive feedback, facilitative feedback, learning, performance, individual differences, goal orientation, motivation, task characteristics i Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance I received in this literature review starting with Namrata Tognatta and Waverely Van Winkle for collecting the mountain of research papers (etc.) and then summarizing many of them in EndNote and Excel. Waverely additionally assisted with organizing and formatting the numerous references used in the paper and Namrata with counting and classifying the references. I also am indebted to Waverly, as well as Eric Hansen, Peggy Redman, Jody Underwood, and Diego Zapata-Rivera, for generating two-page summaries of feedback articles that helped me decide which papers to read first (and more thoroughly) than others. And finally, I’m grateful to my very smart and generous colleagues who reviewed earlier drafts of this review: in addition to Eric, Diego, and Jody, Jim Fife, Malcolm Bauer, Richard Roberts, Madeline Goodman, Pat Kyllonen, and Aurora Graf also provided valuable comments. ii ... - tailieumienphi.vn