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THE INDEPENDENT LEARNER
• “What will happen when the branch breaks off?” (Answer: The tree branch will eventually grow back.) • “Can the tree continue to reach toward the sun?” (Answer: Yes, there are still four more branches the tree can use to continue to stretch upward.) • “When you experience a setback, what can you do?” (Answer: When students experience frustration or when the first thing they try does not work, they can try another strategy to continue reaching toward their values or goals.)
Strategies for Evaluating Learning Through Feedback, Reflection, and Revision
• Think about places other than the classroom where they receive feedback, such as sports, music lessons, or dance class. • Tell a story about a time when they were receptive to feedback and a time they were not. • Think about what happens when they choose to use feedback and when they choose to discard it. Feedback from the teacher can increase learning and motivation, and promote self-regulation (Sparks, 2018). The way teachers typically learn to give feedback focuses on the transmission of information. When educators teach students to become more self-regulated in their learning, they emphasize developing strategies or processes. Teachers serve students best by giving feedback not just on the product but also on the process the students used to produce it. During active learning, teachers should aim to give feedback that focuses on learning goals as well as the tasks the students are performing (van den Bergh, Ros, & Beijaard, 2013). If teachers approach feedback as a learning opportunity, they help create an atmosphere where students value mistakes for their ability to produce subsequent opportunities for learning. Research demonstrates that although teachers believe they are giving a lot of feedback, students report receiving very little teacher feedback. In observational data, researchers see very little teacher feedback in the classroom (Hattie & Yates, 2014). This is because many times teachers provide feedback in a group context, when students tune out, or because teachers mistake praise for feedback. Education researcher John Hattie explains that teacher feedback should help students understand “what they don’t know, what they do know, and where they go [from here]” (as cited in Sparks, 2018). Feedback should answer the following questions (Hattie & Yates, 2014). • Where am I going, and what are my goals? • How am I doing, and what progress have I made? • What should I do next?
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The metacognitive process thrives on feedback from peers and teachers. Students should have the chance to reflect and revise after receiving constructive critique. Feedback is integral to learning, and to succeed, students must learn to accept, analyze, and even seek it out. As a first step, have students do the following.
