Assessment and Metacognition – Reflections on researchED
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #76
At researchED Scotland recently, I enjoyed a talk by Kate Jones on assessment. I thought it might be useful to explore how some of the ideas she shared link to memory and metacognition.
First up, Kate focused on feedback needing to be understandable. If we feed back on a learner’s work, either orally or in writing, they need to understand the message. But there are good reasons to think that students won’t always understand feedback, because:
They may lack some of the vocabulary needed, or
They may be biased or defensive, or
The points given may be vague/hard to understand.
Even if students do understand what we tell them, they may fail to remember it! Another idea raised in the talk that is working memory interacts strongly with feedback. Remember, working memory has a very limited capacity (see Update #70). If we speak to students, giving a long explanation, it could provide useful feedback, but…
Their working memory can quickly become overloaded;
Crucial points could fade and be forgotten, due to working memory’s brief duration;
There could be inaccuracies in recall, due to LTM being reconstructive.
To me, these points together suggest that feedback may require a longer process, rather than being a one-off communication. For example, we might ask students to take a written note of oral feedback provided during a lesson or practical session, which could be checked by the teacher (or a peer).
We might also ask them to:
Summarise their top points of the feedback at the end of the lesson;
Maintain a ‘feedback folder’, so that they can easily refer back to older feedback at a later stage (e.g. when preparing for a test or exam, or when returning to a topic).
Finally, I liked the ‘Detective Strategy’ that Kate discussed in her talk (with credit to Dylan Wiliam and others). This involves making feedback a bit more challenging by asking students to find errors in marked work, rather than directly noting/underlining these for them.
This really reflects a metacognitive approach to teaching. It’s less about reinforcement and repetition, and more about activating students as reflective thinkers.
Thanks so much to the organisers of researchED Scotland, and to Kate for her talk – check out her book when it comes out, I’m sure it will be great! In the meantime, here’s a link to a report on feedback that she recommended:
EEF: Teacher Feedback to Improve Student Learning
I was speaking at the event too (on metacognition, surprisingly!) and I’ll share my own slides in a future update.
All the best for the week ahead.
Jonathan
Please note that my slides and similar materials are used under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.