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Daisy Christodoulou's avatar

I am going to be annoying and say no - because the point of feedback should be to improve the students' thinking / mental model, not to improve the work.

You can argue that improving the work is a first step to improving thinking. But it is possible for a student to spend a lot of time redrafting an essay, fixing all the mistakes...and then to make exactly the same mistakes in their next essay.

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Morgan's avatar

Seem to be just arguing semantics. Couldn’t the EBIs improve students’ thinking?

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Dominic Bristow's avatar

Huh. Well I don't find that in the least bit annoying! But I do find it surprising.

So.. following that logic, what do written comments need to do to be in with a chance of improving students' thinking? Or is the implication that it has to be a teacher following on from those comments that is useful to students improving their mental model? In which case, is all feedback 'useless'?

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Dominic Bristow's avatar

This was not meant as a rhetorical question :)

Genuinely keen to get your take on where the line of ‘useful’ is. This narrative on its own makes sense, but I’m not sure I see how it relates to comments if they have to improve the mental model rather than the work. That’s what most comments I’ve ever seen written in the classroom have attempted to do!

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