The impact of emotions in feedback

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the effect of affect in feedback. Emotion is an important dimension in the seeking, giving, receiving and use of feedback. Many current models of feedback are predicated on a framework of equal provision of positive and negative feedback in order to create an encouraging learning environment, and to reduce the potential for defensive reactions from the learner. These content and linguistic considerations are often anticipatory, rather than responses to learners’ own reactions to feedback conversations. Observational studies of verbal feedback have suggested that despite these good intentions to support the learner, rituals of feedback can result in vaporous or ‘vanishing’ outcomes where the constructive messages for improvement of practice can not be deciphered. The chapter discusses the extent to which emotions can act not only as a barrier but also a stimulus in the learning process. The impact of corrective feedback on learners’ esteem will be highlighted, along with how different learner tendencies or proles may predict responses to external judgement, ranging from open to defensive. Strategies to help promote desirable affective engagement in feedback processes will be discussed. The provision of future-referenced strategies for change can potentially negate feelings of failure. Self-evaluation is described as a key strategy to reduce the emotive impact of feedback and to reduce pressure on the educator to act as the ‘bearer of bad news’. The authors also argue that selfevaluation should be viewed as a skill that can be cultivated as a habit, not only to maximise the learning potential in feedback through limiting unproductive emotions, but also to help individuals operate and co-operate in a reective mode within their day-to-day professional practices. Lack of time, adherence to a well-rehearsed ‘feedback script’, lack of trust in learner ability, lack of trust in educator intentions, and expressions of powerthrough language can inuence both stakeholders’ ability to engage in a collaborative model of feedback. Goffman’s ‘face work’ (1955) and Harre’s ‘positioning theory’ (1999), both arising from discursive psychology, are drawn upon to help explain the unproductive feedback interactions described in the literature in higher and professional education. Practical strategies to facilitate learner agency in learning will be identied so that feedback is seen as a tool for the learner, rather than a tool used on the learner. The key properties to consider in designing effective feedback, and avoiding emotionally charged feedback in order to impinge on dialogue, receptivity and positive action, are distilled at both program (macro) and episodic/interactional (micro) levels.