Ok, let’s start with the two main ways of feedback. The best way of getting feedback is to elicit it from the pupil. Pupil’s take ownership of what they say and feel involved in the lesson when this is done. On one of my previous instalments, I explained an excellent way of eliciting feedback via scaling by asking the pupil a series of questions to draw out the information from the pupil.
Direct Feedback from the instructor needs to honest, specific, positive, limited, and timely. Let’s start with honest. It’s of no use to say if something is good when it’s not. But it’s not good to be too negative with your feedback, as you can easily to de-motivate your pupils with too much criticism of their performance. Best to pick out what they did well and suggest ways of improvement, which would be more positive and motivating to your pupil than just telling them what they have done bad. Also get to point quickly when giving feedback as your pupil doesn’t want to be bombarded with lots of info, where they can become confused and not being able to focus on their objectives. Finally, feedback needs to be timely, where you shouldn’t be distracting your pupil, which can lead to safety critical safety situation occurring, where you input as an instructor should be focused on managing the risk.
Finally, you pupil should be updated on how well they are progressing towards their learning objectives, so they know how well they are doing or if they change things to help achieve them or to change them.