Good job! Clip art from Pixabay.
I am definitely the type of person who likes to give a lot of praise. I like people and want them to feel good about themselves, which usually leads to lots of exclamation points and proclamations about how great everyone is. The articles I read about feedback and praise were good for helping me to step back and examine why and how I give praise. Giving praise is something that comes naturally for me, but it is important for me to realize that it's not always the best course of action in every situation and that other actions can help people even more than giving praise would. These articles will hopefully help me to approach giving feedback in this class intentionally and with care.
The first article I read, "The Difference Between Praise and Feedback," discussed different viewpoints about giving praise. Carol Zweck, who developed the idea of the growth mindset, has written and spoken about "process praise," which is praising the process and effort that a person puts into something rather than praising traits or characteristics of the actual person. So, process praise would be telling your partner in a class project, "You've put so much time into this presentation, and the PowerPoint looks really good" rather than "You're a genius!" The idea behind process praise is that when we are praised as if our success is part of our natural characteristics, we are more likely to develop a fixed mindset and become averse to challenges that will show us being less naturally talented. On the other hand, if we are praised for our effort or process, we learn what we did correctly and associate our effort with the good product. Another writer, Alfie Kohn, says that we shouldn't praise actions at all because that would show conditional regard. I think that Kohn's ideas are really interesting and good for parents, but I don't think they apply to class feedback very well because I'm not raising my classmates and they don't need to know I have unconditional regard for them. I'd like to focus on using process praise when I give feedback to my classmates, because process praise is specific and leads to improvement rather than just good feelings. Also, I think that developing a growth mindset is good for people of all ages, not just for children, so Zweck's ideas apply even when giving feedback to adults.
I also looked at an infographic, "How to Craft Constructive Feedback," which gave specific ideas for giving feedback. I focused my attention on the last part of the infographic, which discusses feedback for people who are working on a project that they want to approve, since that is most applicable to what we are doing in this class. The three steps for giving feedback in this situation are observing, describing, and suggesting. First, observe a feature of the work without praising or bashing it. Then, describe what effect it had on you and suggest how to either improve a wanted effect or get rid of an unwanted effect. I think this is a great process for giving feedback on people's storybooks and portfolios, because we all want our stories to create certain effects for the reader. Focusing feedback on the effects of specific features of the story is a good way to help people tangibly improve, and I know I would be happy to receive feedback like this.
I have not had to give much formal feedback to my peers in the past. Any feedback I did give was mostly just generic praise. I look forward to practice giving specific, process-focused feedback that might actually help people!
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