ABSTRACT
Feedback is crucial to successful learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998). Indeed, there is considerable evidence to indicate that providing feedback to students is the most effective form of educational intervention (Hattie, 1999; Wiliam, 2007). But how can a teacher provide feedback to a class of students? Providing feedback to one individual is difficult enough. Providing useful feedback to a class of 30 is even more demanding. One way of doing this is through written feedback, an issue that is tackled by Sue Swaffield in her chapter in this volume. Our focus here is on oral feedback – equally important, yet generally less well developed in classrooms. Arguably oral feedback has a far greater potential than written feedback to influence student learning. Black and Wiliam’s (1998) review, for example, indicates the power of talk in giving formative feedback to students. Research on formative assessment carried out at King’s College London suggests that teacher questioning is a crucial strategy not only in providing feedback directly to the teacher about students’ understanding but also in providing feedback from the teacher to the student and between students themselves (Black et al., 2003). Realizing the potential of oral feedback requires teachers to shift the classroom talk towards a more dialogic style in which these different elements of oral feedback all contribute to student learning. In this chapter, we focus on oral feedback and examine how teachers can use questioning and dialogue to provide such feedback to students.
