The terms feed up, feed back and feed forward come from a classic article by John Hattie and Helen Timperly. What do they stand for?
A classic introduction to the feedback approach in teaching is found in Hattie and Timperly (2007). They discuss three forms of feedback:
“Effective feedback must answer three major questions asked by a teacher and/or by a student:
- Where am I going? (What are the goals?),
- How am I going? (What progress is being made toward the goal?), and
- Where to next? (What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?)
These questions correspond to notions of feed up, feed back, and feed forward.”
(p. 86. Here edited in a bullet list format.)
Feed up is about the student’s understanding of the learning goal. “When goals have appropriate challenge and teachers and students are committed to these goals, a clearer understanding of the criteria for success is likely to be shared.” (p. 89)
Feed back is about the student’s progress towards achieving the learning goal. “Answering this question involves a teacher (or peer, task, or self) providing information relative to a task or performance goal, often in relation to some expected standard, to prior performance, and/or to success or failure on a specific part of the task.” (p. 89)
Feed forward is about the next steps in the student’s leaning process. “These may include enhanced challenges, more self-regulation over the learning process, greater fluency and automaticity, more strategies and processes to work on the tasks, deeper understanding, and more information about what is and what is not understood. This feed-forward question can have some of the most powerful impacts on learning.” (p. 90)
Feed forward presupposes that feed up and feed back have been carried out, in order for the student to be able to assimilate the feedback and continue the work towards the goals.
Hattie and Timperly emphasize that feedback in the form of self-assessment is important to include in courses, as it develops and supports the student’s self-confidence and insights into how to acquire skills. If the student himself and together with classmates can give feed up and feed back, they have to some extent already acquired knowledge of what the skill means. Feed forward, on the other hand, is the teacher’s most important instrument for supporting learning.
It is also common to use the term formative in connection with feedback that have its main purpose to guide them forward in their learning process.
References
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.