Exploring the content of teachers' feedback : what are teachers actually providing to students?

Quality feedback from teachers (and other sources) can be a significant contributor to academic success (Butler & Winne, 1995; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996; Parr & Timperley, 2010). Parr and Timperley (2010) found a strong relationship between New Zealand primary teachers’ abilities to create effective written feedback to students (i.e., feedback that related to the learning intention, accurately assessed the student’s work, provided suggestions for improvement, focused on deeper features of the text, and contained explicit evaluation messages) and their students’ learning gains on a standardized writing assessment. Hence, there is evidence that improving teacher feedback practices can lift student achievement.