Teachers gained confidence and skills to give meaningful feedback, key to instruction that ensures students’ unique learning needs.
Status: Completed April 2025
This study investigates the effectiveness of the Wise Feedback Professional Development (PD) Learning Series, a teacher-facing intervention designed to improve feedback practices and build trust with students, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds. Using an iterative, multi-phase design—including small-scale pilots, qualitative teacher feedback, and pre-post survey measures—the study evaluates changes in 23 teachers’ beliefs, confidence, and instructional practices across diverse school settings.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
- What supports enable teachers to better use cognitive science findings around students’ sense of belonging to deliver better critical feedback to students?
key findings:
- The pilot phases demonstrated that the Wise Feedback PD Learning Series is a valuable and effective teacher-facing intervention, consistently receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews and high recommendation ratings from participating teachers.
- Participation in the learning series led to statistically significant improvements in teachers’ confidence in giving feedback that maintains student engagement and motivation, as well as positive shifts in their beliefs and practices regarding the purpose and delivery of critical feedback.
- A scalable, asynchronous format of the learning series was successfully developed and piloted, demonstrating it could achieve similarly encouraging results for teachers as the initial, less scalable pilot.