Beyond “Good Job!” – Giving Feedback That Helps Students Learn

Teachers give feedback every day — comments, grades, corrections, encouragement — but not all feedback leads to better learning. Why do some messages help students grow while others leave them confused or unmotivated? In their influential article The Power of Feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), the authors analyze over 500 studies to determine what kinds of feedback most effectively enhance learning and achievement.

They propose that effective feedback answers three key questions for the learner:

1. Where am I going? (clarifying the goal)

2. How am I going? (understanding current performance)

3. Where to next? (guidance for improvement)

Hattie and Timperley distinguish between four levels of feedback:

• Task level: information about correctness (e.g., “You spelled this word incorrectly”).

• Process level: feedback about strategies or approaches (e.g., “Try grouping ideas before writing”).

• Self-regulation level: prompts that help students plan, monitor, and reflect on their learning.

• Self level: personal judgments or praise (e.g., “Good job!”), which tend to be least effective for learning.

Their analysis shows that feedback has one of the strongest influences on achievement, but only when it is clear, specific, and focused on the task or process, not the person. Poorly designed feedback — especially vague praise or excessive criticism — can even harm motivation and learning.

The authors conclude that powerful feedback is forward-looking: it tells learners not only how they performed but what to do next. For teachers, this means creating classroom cultures where feedback is frequent, actionable, and seen as a natural part of learning rather than as evaluation.

Article: Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.

/Mohamed Zohir