Telling it like it is...giving feedback in difficult circumstances

In their workshop at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2007 Caroline Maughan, Jonathan Tecks and Tim Felton (University of the West of England) led a discussion on feedback, using three role plays to demonstrate ways of how (not) to give feedback after a poor performance. The team also presented five basic principles on giving feedback in difficult circumstances and a brief overview of research into responses to negative feedback

The session provided the opportunity for participants to share good practice and suggest guidelines for giving feedback in difficult circumstances – as well as to reflect on their own perceptions of students’ ability. Starting with a video clip from BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing programme, showing four judges giving feedback to a newsreader on his performance and his reaction to it, focused attention on the impact that feedback, both constructive and negative, has on the individual concerned. This was followed by an honest account from Tim of his experience of negative feedback whilst undergoing ‘training the trainer’ accreditation for the Bar Vocational Course, after which participants moved on to the role plays.

The role plays

Delegates were seated in threes and given copies of the role plays. The presenters first gave a demonstration of how not to do it, and then invited each trio to role play the scenario, nominating one to give and one to receive feedback, and the third to observe. After 15 minutes each trio was asked how the person giving the feedback thought it was received, how it was actually received and anything that observer had to add.

• role play 1: a tutor whose confidence is low
• role play 2: a student in whose potential the tutor has little confidence
• role play 3: a student who mistakenly rates their own ability highly

Role play 1: Feedback to a diffident recipient (who happens to be a new colleague)

• Course director: You wanted to see me?
• New lecturer: Thanks for sparing the time. It’s just that I’ve seen that my ratings are consistently low over different lectures – people obviously aren’t happy with me…
• Course director (interrupts): They’re not very good, are they?
• New lecturer: No, but, you know, I feel I’m working under a number of disadvantages – I’m standing in for one of the ‘regulars’ who, I know, is really popular with the students. Also, I’m not an advocate or a natural public speaker so I can’t hope to compete with those who have that kind of background: I feel as though I’m up against some very ‘big names’ in the field and I can’t really compete…The students obviously love them and I’m just not in that league…
• Course director: That’s probably right, but we all had to start somewhere…most of us just made a bit more of an effort, to start with…prepared properly, and so on.
• New lecturer: Trouble is, I’ve really tried hard to make the lectures interesting by including anecdotes from my own practice and I’m sure that the content is relevant, that there is something valuable for the students…Truth is, I’m a bit at a loss what to do or how to make things better. I’m thinking it might be better for everyone if I just gave up lecturing here and left you free to choose someone else…
• Course director: Well, now you mention it…I was thinking we’re a bit overstaffed and, erm, well, ‘last in, first out’, and all that…

Necessary feedback:

As a conscientious course director you’ve now carried out a teaching observation and sought feedback from students, from which you conclude that there are significant problems with this lecturer:

Content is poor because too much material is included. The lecturer does not distinguish between important and lesser points, all of which are presented (in over full PowerPoint slides) similarly. There is a lack of structure as a result, and the lecture is difficult to follow. This could quite easily be improved by pruning out some of the less important material and highlighting – and linking – the main points.

Delivery is also poor – when lecturing, the lecturer often tries to refer to slides, a more detailed lecture handout and to textbooks as prompts, gets confused and loses their place. There is little eye contact with students, who are not engaged. The lecture does not flow. The lecturer needs a single point of reference as a prompt for their delivery. (You have noticed that they are much better when answering questions than in normal delivery because they stand up, head back, with eye contact and speak directly to the students, engaging them fully. Normal delivery needs to be adjusted in this way.)

Generally, this lecturer’s lack of self confidence is adversely affecting their performance. They are far too concerned with what the students may or may not want from them and with how they will be received. They need to have confidence in the value they can deliver to the students by being more selective and positive about what they present and how they go about it.

Overall, this new lecturer is personable and conscientious. They have the makings of good member of the team. You would like to keep them on board and encourage them to improve.

Role play 2: Feedback from seminar tutor to a ‘no hoper’ student

This is a first year student who has performed poorly so far. He has failed the first coursework (essay). He hasn’t got the hang of basic legal reasoning, how to put a ‘legal’ argument using appropriate authorities. His essay was brief in content, poorly organised and poorly expressed. The mark was 28%. The student attends seminars regularly, but stays silent.

This conversation takes place in early February, after the coursework has been returned.

• Student (starts off fairly positively, but responses from tutor cause him/her to appear increasingly disinterested, alienated, doesn’t make eye contact with tutor. As conversation continues, student becomes more and more switched off): I’ve come to see you because I don’t seem to be doing very well and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m finding the course really hard, I spend a lot of time reading and preparing, but when I get to the seminar, everything I’ve done seems to be completely wrong.
• Tutor (looking through papers): Just a minute, who are you? Well I can’t really comment on your seminar performance, seeing as you never open your mouth in the seminar. In fact I was under the impression you weren’t preparing. You look totally out of it a lot of the time. Well, you say you prepare – how much time do you spend preparing for a seminar?
• Student: Anything between four and six hours.
• Tutor: With that amount of time you should be better prepared.
• Student: I’ve got such a low mark for my first coursework, and now I don’t really know what to do for the second one. I’ve put a lot of effort in, and got nowhere. Things aren’t good in my other subjects either. I wish I’d never started the course.
• Tutor: Well that may be something to think about.
• Student: I’m really not enjoying it.
• Tutor: Ha, what ever makes you think you’re supposed to enjoy it? Law is a tough subject, we all had to go through it, you know. It takes a lot of dedication and intellect. You got a poor mark in your essay because quite a large part of it was complete rubbish. You can’t afford to carry on like that, you won’t pass the exam. You must work harder. Make sure you attend all the lectures and seminars. Take a good set of notes in lectures, prepare thoroughly for seminars. Don’t be so diffident in seminars, make a contribution. Read around the subject a bit, check out these journal articles (hands over list).
• Student gets up, not looking at tutor, and leaves.

Necessary feedback

There are significant problems with this student. He is performing poorly in all subjects and privately you have doubts as to whether he will ever make it. What are the options? Should he be advised to give up now, or do you look for a way to get him switched on so that he can begin to understand (and enjoy) law? What can you suggest to help him ‘crack’ legal method?

Role play 3: Feedback to a negotiation student with a high opinion of themselves, following a negotiation role play

• Tutor: So, how do you think…
• Student: I think it went really well! I’m sorry the role play ended when it did – I was really getting into it! I think we were getting to a deal – in just a few more minutes, I’m sure we would have got a deal!
• Tutor: I’m interested to hear you say that because…
• Student: Oh, well, I know what you’re going to say – but I think they were just playing for time because they didn’t want to settle so quickly. They had to make it look good, you know, make it look like they had worked for the deal. If they just took it straight away, it wouldn’t have looked good for them…
• Tutor: You think, even after you told them your client was virtually bankrupt…
• Student: Oh, I was going to explain that the client had the money to do the deal, so that wouldn’t have been a problem, would it? Except that they just didn’t give me time to explain all that, properly. They were asking so many questions at that point, they just didn’t listen.
• Tutor: You made your offer within the first couple of minutes…
• Student: Of course – cards on the table! That’s my style! Then, everyone knows where they are! Don’t you think that’s best?
• Tutor: Well, erm…

Necessary feedback

What you would really like to tell this student is that, in your view, the negotiation they conducted didn’t go at all well. They made a number of basic mistakes:

They dominated the session, adopting a bullying, hectoring tone and ignoring some apparently genuine openings to talk meaningfully offered by their opponent.

They put their best offer on the table virtually straight away, which made it impossible then to negotiate a more favourable deal for their client.

They disclosed some confidential information about the weakness of their own client’s financial position which attracted considerable interest from their opponent and, in the final analysis, would probably have made a negotiated settlement impossible.

In your view, this student has some good qualities of energy and engaging enthusiasm, but they act without thinking and talk without listening.

Giving feedback in difficult circumstances: five basic principles

1. Ask questions to encourage the recipient to evaluate what they have done, to think about difficult issues and draw their own conclusions. Questions are the best way of leading into adverse comment, for example: How did you feel that went? Are you particularly pleased/unhappy about any aspect? With hindsight, is there anything you’d have done differently? What could you have done? (not “you should have…”).
2. Comment on specific things the recipient did, not what they are like. Behaviour can be changed, character not. Offer a description, not a judgment.
3. Be constructive – comment on things that went well. Where they did not, don’t leave it at that but suggest areas for improvement or further practice.
4. Focus on main points only – nobody can concentrate on changing everything at once.
5. Be sensitive to the effect your message is having on the recipient and adjust to that – or stop – if necessary.

Responses to negative feedback: an outline of the research

Why do some students who perform poorly on set tasks and assignments react positively, remain motivated and put in extra effort to improve, whilst others lose motivation and may even switch off from a module or their course of study? What can teachers do to encourage the former response and discourage the latter?

Perhaps we first need to acknowledge the function of feedback in relation to student perceptions and beliefs abut their goals and abilities – and at the same time consider our own perceptions of these. Three areas of research into people’s perceptions in the face of failure are highlighted below. As we shall see, the three areas are closely linked.

1. Self efficacy
2. students’ implicit theories about personal attributes
3. Fairness – of outcome (distribution of marks) and procedure (assessment method)

Self efficacy

Self efficacy is the belief that you have the ability/power to achieve a goal, an effect, do something successfully. (The belief may or may not be accurate). Self efficacy is sometimes confused with self esteem – your feelings of self worth. Self efficacy is task oriented – for example, I’m hopeless at ice-skating (low self efficacy), but being good at ice-skating isn’t particularly important to me and so failure at it doesn’t diminish my feelings about myself, that I’m a reasonably OK sort of person (quite high self esteem!). Or you can write wonderful music or poetry and know you can (high self efficacy), but consider yourself absolutely hopeless at relationships (low self esteem).

Often there will be a correlation – for example, when you think of yourself as a self confident person and you feel confident that you can be successful at something which is very important to you.

Self efficacy “influences individual choices, goals, emotional reactions, effort, coping, and persistence. Self efficacy also changes as a result of learning, experience and feedback” (Gist & Mitchell 1992: 186). Students with high self efficacy are better at organising their own learning and do better academically than those who have doubts about their intellectual abilities (Bandura 1997: 239)

Research indicates that people with high and low self efficacy interpret feedback on a task similarly when they’ve done well, but dissimilarly when they haven’t. When a person with high self efficacy and one with low self efficacy both do well, they attribute that success to their ability. Where performance is poor, people with high self efficacy attribute it to insufficient effort or task difficulty, whereas people with low self efficacy attribute it to lack of ability.

So, if you get a poor mark in an assessment and get negative feedback from your tutor, what could happen? If your self efficacy is high you are more likely to take note of the feedback and work to improve your grades. But if it’s low (I’m no good at this, I can’t do this, I don’t understand it and never will) then your self efficacy, motivation, coping strategies and effort may decline with each subsequent performance. A negative spiral like that can be difficult to reverse (Gist & Mitchell 1992: 202).

In our experience students enter academic and professional law courses with high expectations. Disappointment and frustration when progress is not as fast as expected may lower self efficacy so that students, to paraphrase Bandura, slacken their efforts and give up quickly in the face of difficulties.

And what about us? We know we’re articulate and intelligent, and good at law – but our high self efficacy means we may forget that others may not be able to do it as quickly and easily as we can. What happens when our expectations of students are not met? Might our disappointment and frustration reduce our self efficacy? Is it possible we slacken our efforts with some students, especially persistent failures?

Research cited in Bandura 1997 suggests that teachers with a low sense of self efficacy tend to take a pessimistic view of student motivation. Furthermore: “Teachers with a high sense of efficacy tend to view difficult students as reachable and teachable and regard their learning problems as surmountable by ingenuity and extra effort. Teachers of low perceived efficacy are inclined to invoke low student ability as an explanation for why their students cannot be taught” (Bandura 1997: 242).

Students’ implicit theories about personal attributes

In the 1980s Dweck and Leggett formulated a model to predict when positive or negative responses to failure are likely to occur. They proposed that people’s responses are primarily based on the implicit theories they hold about personality. They identified two typical orientations: ‘entity theorists’ and ‘incremental theorists’.

Entity theorists believe that personal attributes like ability are fixed and uncontrollable. These people are performance oriented, in that when given a task or assignment they want to demonstrate how good they are at it – they are “more motivated to prove themselves than to improve themselves” (El-Alayli & Baumgartner 2003: 120). They therefore tend to attribute poor performance to lack of ability, which they can’t do anything about. Failure at a task may therefore be accompanied by feelings of helplessness, reduced effort and lack of desire to improve – likely to result in poor performance in the future.

Unlike entity theorists, incremental theorists are challenged rather than threatened by failure. They are learning oriented, motivated by a desire to improve themselves. They believe that personal attributes can be changed and perceive performance of a task as a stage in the development of skills and abilities. They therefore tend to attribute a poor performance to lack of effort rather than low ability and will respond to negative feedback with increased motivation, effort and persistence.

The learning environment has been shown to have a bearing on these different responses. A competitive environment, which values success in terms of outperforming others, may encourage the perception that success lies in high ability. Putting in a lot of effort may be seen as a sign of poor ability, precisely because you need to work harder (Hong, Chiu, Dweck et al 1999: 596). On the other hand, a learning oriented environment values success in terms of personal development, effort and challenge (El-Alayli & Baumgartner 2003: 121).

What about law learning environments? There seems little doubt that with their strong emphasis on performance, grades, normative assessment and feedback, they encourage the perception that high ability is valued above all other factors. If this is so, we need to be aware that negative feedback given to students with an entity theory perspective could block their learning. But how are we to recognise them?

Perhaps the answer is to try and convert entity theorists into incrementalists. Implicit theories can be changed by our approach to assessment and feedback. Nicol and Mackfarlane-Dick recommend “many low stakes tasks with feedback geared to providing information about progress and achievement rather than high stakes summative assessment tasks where information is only about success or failure or about how students compare with peers. Other strategies…include (1) providing marks on written work only when students have responded to feedback comments, (2) allocating time for students to re-write selected pieces of work – this would help change students’ expectations about purpose, (3) automated testing with feedback, (4) drafts and resubmissions” (2006: 206-207).

Fairness of outcome and procedure

People are likely to react defensively to negative feedback they think is unfair. They are not only less likely to accept the feedback but may also develop negative feelings towards the person who delivered it, the course and the institution.

Perceptions of injustice have been found to have a significant impact on the assimilation of negative feedback. Research in employment and educational settings has centred on two main areas – distributive justice (perceptions of the fairness of outcomes, for example allocation of course grades, pay rises) and procedural justice (perceptions of the fairness of the evaluation method).

Studies confirm that fairness influences the extent to which negative feedback is accepted. Students are concerned about fairness because of the importance of grades for their future life and work. They tend to focus on their mark when they get an assignment back, and the mark may determine whether they read and take on board the feedback. Perceived discrepancies between the mark they expected and the mark they received can lead to negative perceptions about the fairness of the mark received, and the process used to decide it.

Further, perceptions of fairness may affect students’ views of their teachers. People given a grade lower than that expected are more likely than those with good grades to see the grade distribution as unfair, and this perception may lead them to view the teacher unfavourably. The same may be true of students who think the grading procedures are unfair. (The literature is summarised in Tata 1999.)

Furthermore, students’ perceptions of distributive justice may be influenced not only by a performance/expectation discrepancy, but also by what they felt they deserved, given the amount of effort they put in, or a comparison of their grades with other students’ grades and the amount of effort the others put in. (Research suggests that students value effort more highly than lecturers (Adams 2005). If a lot of time and effort is expended on an assignment, then students may over-estimate the marks they are likely to get.) Those who regard themselves as under-rewarded may feel dissatisfied, upset and angry. (The literature is reviewed in Chory-Assad 2002, Nesbit & Burton 2006.)

Evaluation procedures are regarded as fair when they correspond to set standards, for example “consistency, suppression of personal bias, use of accurate information, voice, and congruity with prevailing standards or ethics” (Tata 1999: 265).

Studies on ‘interactional justice’ – the interpersonal component of procedural justice – have found that negative feedback is more likely to be accepted if it is delivered with interpersonal fairness, ie if recipients feel they were treated with respect, dignity and without bias, and their personal needs and concerns were taken into account (see discussion in Leung, Su & Morris 2001). Moreover, clear, accurate, non-ambiguous communication has been shown to increase perceptions of procedural fairness and so encourage positive responses and motivation and reduce the likelihood of aggression towards teachers (Hong, Chiu, Dweck et al 1999: 567).

Chory-Assad (2002) found that student concerns about procedural fairness reduced the motivation to learn, encouraged negative attitudes to the course and aggressive feelings towards lecturers. Nesbit & Burton (2006) took Chory-Assad’s findings further and looked at the implications of fairness perceptions for student self efficacy. They found that poor performers were more likely to have concerns about fairness and to be negatively affected by them. These concerns appeared to result in lower self efficacy and satisfaction, accompanied by lowered expectations about future performance.

So what should be we doing? As far as possible, we should prevent negative justice perceptions from arising. Firstly, we should try to ensure that students form realistic expectations about performance, so that they are less likely to be disappointed if the mark doesn’t match up. We should explain performance criteria and marking guides and check they are understood, for example by discussing good and poor answers, showing students the range of marks from the same assignment the previous year. We should make it clear that students are graded on the merits of the work (if this is the case) rather than on the amount of time and effort they put into it.

Secondly, we can encourage students to look inwards for reasons for failure rather than attributing it to external causes. Argyris thinks we are mistaken if we think getting people to learn is about attitudes – ie that with the right commitment and motivation, learning will automatically come about. In his view this will only happen if we teach people how to think through their behaviour and its causes. There’s a human tendency to blank out negative feedback and blame anyone but ourselves when we experience failure; this “defensive reasoning” blocks learning and we may not even be aware we are doing it. Questioning students about their beliefs and perceptions may help to uncover their reasoning processes and pinpoint the real causes of poor performance.

And what about us? Argyris (1991) would say the starting point is for us teachers to look inwards, to critically examine our own reasoning processes about our behaviour. Do we reason defensively? If so, how, why does this happen? What are the consequences? Are there inconsistencies between the kinds of behaviour we espouse and what we actually do?

For example, take the five basic principles of giving negative feedback above – we know how we should be doing it, but do we? One or two of us may be “dispositionally a critical person” (Leung, Su & Morris 2001: 1158), so could have trouble sticking to the rules.

But a note of caution – many of the studies mentioned above are based on subjects’ reactions to hypothetical scenarios. Behaviour in real situations may be different. Others are based on self reporting of real experiences, but we can’t be certain that recall is always accurate. Also, these studies can’t take into account the quality of the staff/student relationship – the trust that may or may not exist and the effect this might have on student perceptions about their goals and abilities.

References

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• Adams J (2005) ‘What makes a grade? Faculty and student perceptions’ Teaching of Psychology 32(1): 21-25
• Argyris C (1991) ‘Teaching smart people how to learn’ Harvard Business Review 69: 99-109
• Bandura A (1997) Self efficacy: the exercise of control New York: WH Freeman
• Chory-Assad R (2002) ‘Classroom justice: perceptions of fairness as a predictor of student motivation, learning and aggression’ Communication Quarterly 50(1): 58-78
• Dweck C & Leggett E (1988) ‘A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality’ Psychological Review 95: 256-273
• El-Alayli A & Baumgardner A (2003) ‘If at first you don’t succeed, what makes you try, try again? Effects of implicit theories and ability feedback in a performance-oriented climate’ Self and Identity 2: 119-135
• Gist M & Mitchell T (1992) ‘Self efficacy: a theoretical analysis of its determinants and malleability Academy of Management Review 17(2): 183-211
• Hong Y, Chiu C, Dweck C, Lin D & Wan W (1999) ‘Implicit theories, attributions and coping: a meaning system approach’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(3): 588-599
• Leung K, Su S & Morris W (2001) ‘When is criticism not constructive? The roles of fairness perceptions and dispositional attributions in employee acceptance of critical supervisory feedback’ Human Relations 54(9): 1155-1187
• Nesbit P & Burton S (2006) ‘Student justice perceptions following assignment feedback’ Assessment and Evaluation in HE 31(6): 655-670
• Nicol D & Macfarlane-Dick D (2006) ‘Rethinking formative assessment in HE: a theoretical model and seven principles of good feedback practice’ Studies in Higher Education 31(2): 199-208
• Tata J (1999) ‘Grade distributions, grading procedures, and students’ evaluations of instructors: a justice perspective’ Journal of Psychology 133(3): 263-270

Last Modified: 9 July 2010