A Matter of Trust

A phrase I think about often is “if nothing changes, nothing will change.” And it’s true in all facets of life.

In order to improve on or master anything, we need to engage in goal-oriented instruction and practice of sufficient quality and frequency. We need to reach beyond our current level of performance.

And we need feedback as to how we are doing. Why? So we can change!

Plain and simple, feedback is a key piece of the learning puzzle without which we will never know where we are going wrong, how close we are to our learning goals, or how to address our deficiencies and improve.

Feedback has the potential to be incredibly powerful, but it can also be variable.

For feedback to be effective, we need to know when to give it, how to frame it, we need to make sure the receiver is ready to receive it, understands it, knows how to use the feedback to advance learning, and has the opportunity and tools needed to do so.

When these boxes are all checked, feedback can motivate learners to invest more effort, do better, and improve.

But what if something gets in the way of students receiving feedback in a constructive way (assuming that this is the intention) — especially if the feedback is particularly critical?

While much is known about ways to give constructive positive feedback, less is known about how best to provide effective negative or critical feedback so that it leads to improvement without destroying self-confidence and motivation along the way. And this is because, as with many things, a lot depends on the learning environment and the relationships present within.

Characteristics of learning environments that can help students best respond to critical feedback are those which:

• encourage and welcome mistakes as part of the learning process
• foster a growth mindset
• allow learners to experience the connection between effort and success
• provide a clear picture about current progress
• clearly articulate next steps and provide opportunities for improvement
• sincerely praise effort and the process used instead of outcomes

Interwoven into such a learning environment where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities is a sense of belonging and trust. Learning environments characterized by trust and support allow students to receive critical feedback and work through mistakes in a positive way and can prevent self-defeating behaviors and mindsets.

The idea is this → if you receive negative feedback from someone you trust, you are more likely to accept that they have your best interests at heart, and are acting in good faith and not because they have some bias or preconceived notions against you and your abilities.

To explore this idea, researchers have turned to contexts in which trust between the giver and receiver of feedback may be more tenuous. One such context is when a white educator gives feedback to a Black student. Studies have found that when compared to other racial and ethnic groups, Black students tend to have lower levels of trust relative to white Americans. Black students’ tendency to mistrust in the school environment may stem from the concern of being seen through the lens of a negative stereotype, or confirming one (a phenomenon known as stereotype threat), or the real possibility that they might be discriminated against.

We know these fears are very real and rooted in larger systemic issues of racial inequity which can threaten students’ academic identity and performance. There are many messages sent to Black and other minority students that they don’t belong in school, or that they are lacking in some way. Alongside the fact that Black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended and make up more than a quarter of all students who are referred to the police, research has also found they are more likely to receive patronizing praise in school.

Thus, it is understandable that Black students might have a higher level of mistrust toward white teachers than other students. When one grows up experiencing bias on a regular basis it can be easy to perceive whole systems and institutions as unfair and infer bias in otherwise ambiguous-seeming situations. If, for example, you grow up in a violent environment, you are more likely to expect hostility in your interactions with others and may interpret ambiguous provocations as intentional, and as a result, respond in an aggressive way. The result? Often, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mistrust can undermine motivation if students are uncertain how to interpret teacher feedback. When a Black student receives negative feedback from a teacher whom they don’t trust, they may fail to separate the teacher’s real motivations to help, from perceived racial bias. A student already worried about being subjected to biased treatment may interpret the situation in a way that makes the most sense to them and allow their mistrust to “fill in the blanks”. This in turn can damage their motivation to participate and put in effort in the future.

There’s our self-fulfilling prophecy again.

A common solution, when faced with the need to give criticism, is to first give some praise, and then deliver the criticism. Presumably, the idea is that the praise will sugar coat the criticism and make it easier to swallow. But in situations where the receiver of the feedback is in a precarious position in terms of trust, praise of “OK” or mediocre work can backfire. Although often well-intentioned, if students see praise as conveying low-expectations, it may end up confirming their suspicions that they are being stereotyped and others are biased against them. After all, why would you praise someone for doing an “OK job” on a basic task unless you never expected them to do any better?

This begs the question: What can be done to help all students reap the benefit of feedback — even when it may be critical in nature?

Turns out there are some quite simple, but powerful moves we can make to help address this and other similar issues. So-called ‘wise interventions’ are strategies that are attuned (or wise) to how people see themselves and their position in the world. They ask, and aim to answer the question: are there aspects of people’s psychology that are hurting their outcomes? And then look to change this process. These strategies rely heavily on the belief that in many cases the way we make sense of things in our environment can adapt and change to become more positive or productive as well as permanent.

For example, subtle moves have been used in testing situations to try and remove stereotype threat. In a test-taking situation, a group of motivated, academically strong students was told that the test was either a problem-solving lab task or a test measuring intellectual ability. Researchers found that when students were told the test measured intellectual ability, Black students performed less well than white students. Conversely, when no stereotype threat was present (in the lab task condition), Black students and white students performed equally well (when matched on SAT scores).

Psychologist David Yeager and colleagues conducted a series of double-blind randomized studies exploring the impact of a wise feedback intervention to help restore trust in critical feedback situations. In their study of Black 7th grade students receiving critical feedback on written work, researchers used specific strategies to help disabuse students of the idea that they were seen as limited in ability, or not belonging in an academic environment and also worked to repair trust.

The idea was to:

• Explicitly convey critical feedback to students in a way that reflected high standards and expectations and not bias.
• Assure students that they had the potential to reach high standards.
• Provide detailed, actionable feedback tied to resources that would make achieving the high standards possible.

Doing these three things, the researchers posited, would create a positive, productive space that could help prevent students from having negative interpretations of feedback. Then, provided they had the resources to do so, students would be more likely to improve, thereby refuting the stereotype by reaching a higher standard.

On the other hand, a student may interpret critical feedback from a teacher they don’t trust as an indication of bias. This can perpetuate a downward spiral as the student may ignore the feedback and begin to disengage in learning. But what if the motion could be reversed? If the teacher could remove the perception of bias, the student might begin to be more trusting of the feedback, engage in the learning process in a more meaningful way, thereby setting new beliefs and behaviors into motion.

Seventh-grade Black and white students were randomly assigned to get written feedback on a graded essay assignment as well as either a placebo note or an intervention note. The intervention note represented the wise intervention condition and assured students that the teacher had provided critical feedback because they had high expectations for the student and were confident the student could meet the high standards. The placebo note simply told the student that the comments represented teacher feedback on the essay.

Students who received the intervention note were more likely to submit a revision of the essay, make the changes suggested by the teacher, and improve the quality of work in the revision.

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