Focus on Formative Feedback

By Valerie J. Shute. 2007

3,302 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article reviews the corpus of research on feedback, with a focus on formative feedback—defined as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify his or her thinking or behavior to improve learning. According to researchers, formative feedback should be nonevaluative, supportive, timely, and specific. 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 time has elapsed). Finally, several variables 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 are discussed. This review concludes with guidelines for generating formative feedback.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0cc18ca8bad7c6c8ead9d9c793ca52c6928bd0d4

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Education

Citations in the corpus

Types and frequencies of feedback interventions in classroom interaction in secondary education (2012, methodology): “Shute (2008) completed a review of approximately 100 articles, conference proceedings, books and book chapters, all centered on feedback.”
Shepherding the crowd yields better work (2012, background): “Concrete expert feedback can help people understand and strive toward key metrics in a task domain [28,29,31].”
Researching feedback dialogue: an interactional analysis approach (2017, background): “While there are studies about the effects of various kinds of comment on student performance on tests, these typically do not examine the processes involved and how these effects are achieved (Shute 2008).”
Understanding feedback: A learning theory perspective (2013, methodology): “In order to enrich learning outcomes, feedback should be directed at the task (Ashwell, 2000; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) and be specific, detailed, and clear (Shute, 2008).”
Learning Rewards from Linguistic Feedback (2020, background): “We observe that humans use all three in a curriculum structure known as “scaffold-ing” (Shute 2008): teachers initially use descriptive feed-back to correct speciﬁc behavior, then switch to evaluative as the learners’ score improves (Fig 2D).”
Feedback: focusing attention on engagement (2011, background): “Shute (2008) suggests that for students to take action resulting from feedback they need motive, opportunity and means.”
A scholarly approach to solving the feedback dilemma in practice (2016, background): “Shute (2008) summarises this very succinctly by arguing we must, like the detective seeking a murder suspect, ensure that the students have motive, opportunity and means.”
Affect-aware tutors: recognising and responding to student affect (2009, background): “One obvious next frontier in computational instruction is to systematically examine the relationship(s) between student affective state and learning outcomes (Shute, 2008).”
A Critical Review of Research on Student Self-Assessment (2019, background): “Yet, Shute (2008) noted in her review of the literature on formative feedback that “despite the plethora of research on the topic, the specific mechanisms relating feedback to learning are still mostly murky, with very few (if any) general conclusions” (p. 156).”
Feedback Dialogues That Stimulate Students' Reflective Thinking (2013, background): “Third, to benefit from feedback, the feedback type used should match students’ learning needs (Shute, 2008).”
The Nature of Feedback: How Peer Feedback Features Affect Students' Implementation Rate and Quality of Revisions. (2016, methodology): “, its timing, complexity, or content) contribute to the effectiveness of feedback is largely disputed (Molloy & Boud, 2014; Mory, 2004; Shute, 2008).”
Improving fraction understanding in sixth graders with mathematics difficulties: Effects of a number line approach combined with cognitive learning strategies. (2019, background): “However, the timing and manner of the feedback must be considered (Shute, 2008, for a review).”