Testing and Feedback: Slow down and provide enough time for students to work with feedback

In one of my posts (here) I talked about how feedback can be useful to develop a growth mindset. Here I will demonstrate as how we can use testing strategy to provide in-depth feedback, work with students and consequently developing a growth mindset.

Testing students without feedback and without giving proper time to discuss the feedback is just time wasted teaching a topic. While acknowledging that testing is not the only way of feeding back to improve students learning, here I take testing as one possible case of how to develop deep learning through feedback. I would like to start with a case in a science classroom:

Ms R is teaching the topic “Cells and Tissues” to class 6^th. She has almost finished teaching the topic and today she completes the remaining few bit in half a lesson. In the second half of the lesson, she asks students to prepare for an upcoming test. She thinks that since she has taught all the content related to the topic, students should be able to prepare for the test on their own now. She sits on her chair and starts checking the copies of students from class 7 as she has a science class with them as well. At the end she reminds the students to prepare for the test over the weekend. The test on “Cells and Tissues” takes place the following week during class. Ms R collects the answer papers and marks them during her free time. After two days of the test, Ms R gives back the students their checked test papers.

Alia is happy for maintaining her score of 95% and the teacher has commented “Excellent! Keep it up” with a smiley face on top of the paper.  Aleem and Hina are fine to know that at least they passed the test. Very few students are above 85%, most are between 50% to 65% and few are below 50%. Huma knows that she is fail as usual. She sees the remarks all over the paper with a red pen. She does not want anyone to know about it and so quietly pushes the paper into her bag. She is worried as if Ms.R will again ridicule her infront of others for being useless. Some students whisper to each other about their grades, but Huma is thankful that no one is near her to talk to. After distributing the papers, Ms R writes the new topic on the board and announces that they are now going to study “Human system”. 

One would wonder, what’s wrong! This is how a normal lesson would look like. After all this is what we do: we teach, we test and we move on. However there are many things that we, as teachers miss if we do not stop and pay attention. Let’s deconstruct this case and look at the details as what is wrong and how can we improve.

First and foremost, the teacher finishes the topic and assumes that since she has taught whatever was possible, students should be able to prepare on their own. This is not correct. All students are not at the same level. The ability level of each student to grasp the topic is different. So while the teacher was rushing through the topic to finish it, many students have not grasp the concepts due to different reasons. The best thing one could do with extra spare time is to provide individual assistant to students who need help. The teacher should never take this time as granted to do his/her extra stuff (including checking copies, test papers and or just resting). This time of the class should never be used for any other activity than what it is meant for. In this case it is meant for helping students who have not understood the concept very well. The teacher can do it through individual teaching, pair teaching or small group teaching ranging from 3-6minutes of duration for each group.

Alia has scored 95% and this would seem perfect. No extra feedback is given. This is how a fixed mindset is being developed here as the perfect student of the class. Later in life, such students are more prone to developing anxiety and stress because they cannot handle imperfection. It is important to develop a growth mind set for Alia that everything is not perfect and there are always areas to move beyond. The teacher can provide feedback on why Alia did not get a 100%? Which 5% of the test did she go wrong in? What is beyond that test, perhaps Alia can go and read an article on the topic.

Huma is the opposite case. She has lots of corrections with red pen all over the test which is overwhelming and scary for her. She feels afraid and guilty of her abilities. That means she does not feel safe. She feels inferior, unable to study or work hard. She develops a low self-concept herself being incompetent – again a fixed mindset is developed. How can such situation be improved? I think one needs to study cases like Huma in greater depth. First thing to do with such students is to re-teach them the concepts, while you have spare time in hand and while others are preparing for the test. If we are not re-teaching the concept to such students, we are risking an achievement gap. An achievement gap is created when these students move to the next level of the concept without grasping the basics. Secondly, after giving back the test papers, the teacher can make an appointment with Huma as an individual case, outside of the class. The teacher can show her and guide her how she could answer the questions. She can be given the test as an assignment to complete at home. All in all it is important for students like Huma to go over and re-do the test paper. These strategies could be used with Huma in a few test until Huma shows signs of improvement.

As with the rest of the class gaining average points and passing the test, has problems too. A student who has got 60% and passed, we should question the rest of the 40%? This means that the student has not grasped 40% of the concepts given in the test which is a hyge achievement gap. We cannot expect a 90% from this student on the next test on ‘Systems’ with a 40% gap at the foundational level. Similarly this student cannot improve drastically in class 7 for he/she has an achievement gap developed in class 6. As the achievement gap increases at each level/class, it builds up a huge mountain for them in class 10, that they could hardly climb. At the end of the day we still blame the students for the failures.

All in all what I suggest is to give enough time to discuss test papers during classroom teaching. The teacher can take the whole lesson time to discuss the test paper. He/she can give the paper back and ask the students to read it all over again and read the teachers’ written feedback. Then she can ask them if anyone has any concerns. She can proceed to ask students to correct their mistakes on their homework copies by using their class room notes/text books (it is called open book test). Along the way she can check on the low achievers to help them start on the corrections (remember it is very hard for a falling person to get up and they definitely need a hand). Once majority of the class have finished their correction, ask them to check each other’s answers. It could be expected that some top achiever will finish their work pretty quickly, they can be asked to sit and help those who need help. If students like Huma could not finish her corrections by the end of the class, she could be given it as an assignment to do at home. By taking these steps, the teacher can create a safe space for even failed students. They should feel comfortable in sharing and discussing their mistakes with each other. Taking one whole class for correction and getting in the feedback loop is a worthy investment in developing conceptual understanding and deep learning. It is the deep learning that is important rather than teaching concept broadly with more content.