Pedagogy Oct 2020

Breaking Through the Prison Walls of Feedback

Monica Mische

Abstract

This article examines how faculty at one college respond to student writing, how students interpret that feedback, and how through collective self-evaluation and community-building workshops some faculty paved a path toward more productive response. The first part of the findings resonate with what scholars in the 1980s discovered: that teachers’ feedback strategies often operate at cross-purposes with students’ motivations and understandings. Asking why, after forty years of scholarship, such counterproductive strategies still prevail, the study suggests burdensome workloads, lack of training, rigid applications of rubrics and genres, and isolation from peers are to blame. It then profiles three teachers who, despite these obstacles, provide deep-reaching feedback. Although their pedagogies and backgrounds differ, they share common bonds, teaching authentically from who they are, an approach that is open to all teachers once they feel freed to adopt it.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2020-10-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-8544586
Open Access
Closed
Topics
assessment

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (6)

  1. Schreibersdorf (2014)
    Literary Discipline in the Margins
    Pedagogy
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    Teaching English in the Two-Year College
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    College Composition and Communication
  5. Sperling (1994)
    Constructing the Perspective of Teacher-as-Reader: A Framework for Studying Res…
    Research in the Teaching of English
Show all 6 →
  1. Brannon et al. (1982)
    On Students' Rights to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 13 works outside this index ↓
  1. Dohrer (1991)
    Do Teachers’ Comments on Students’ Papers Help?
    College Teaching  ↗
  2. Elbow (1993)
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    College English  ↗
  3. Ferris (2007)
    Preparing Teachers to Respond to Student Writing
    Journal of Second Language Writing  ↗
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    College Composition and Communication  ↗
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    College Composition and Communication  ↗
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    English Journal  ↗
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    College English  ↗
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    English Education  ↗
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    English Education  ↗
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    College Composition and Communication  ↗
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CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →

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