Blog – The (core) academic skill of receiving feedback

One thing I can say about myself is that I have had to practice receiving feedback. I don’t think anyone finds it easy, but I have learnt to practice my responses to this. In fact I continue to practice how to respond. Yet, I know that feedback is a critical academic skill that I couldn’t live without. Without feedback I couldn’t improve or develop, but equally sometimes feedback is soul destroying and taking it on board can be almost unfeasible.

I was never a natural academic. From an early age I needed extra practice and repetition to embed my learning. From maths to spelling I never just “got it”. Having to do additional practice with my mum outside of primary school was burdensome and somewhat embarrassing. No-one else seemed to need the extra help (or so it seemed). No one else seemed to care about feedback that wasn’t completely rosey (or so I thought). But it really bothered me. I had to have extra tuition outside of secondary school in both English literature and maths. It felt more routine by then, but even so it was incredibly wearisome. Even on my undergraduate I was offered a bit more help by my personal tutor to get my writing up to scratch.

That said perhaps this early practice helped. It certainly made me realise that I could achieve things simply through enough determination and practice. I learnt that with continued work I could improve myself. This is probably a really useful skill, though one that I can’t entirely apply in all domains of my life all the time. Sometimes when I hear some one giving me “advice” on how something I did could be done better I grit my teeth and suppress the desire to tell them to “get lost”. Only last week when the external examiner on one of the modules I coordinate made a suggestion, my instinctive reaction was to roll my eyes and sigh. I mentioned the feedback to a colleague and asked if they thought it worthwhile, my colleagues immediate reaction was much more conciliatory and positive in fact. They advocated I take in the feedback with no delay. I mean yeah- we all agree the feedback was coming from a good place- to help, but equally it can be a bit annoying.

The same week I had to have a conversation with one of my children about this too. They are finding feedback hard and getting into real trouble. After a long conversation we have come up with our own taxonomy:

Feedback that is a threat to your personhood (an insult): not worth reacting too, walk away and tell a responsible adult. Don’t waste your energy on a bully.

Feedback that is intended well but could pose a threat to face (be a bit embarrassing or frustrating or tiring): focus your energy and try not to overreact, breathe, it is coming from a good place and will help. Use it. Perhaps debrief to someone later but use it.

Friendly critique (perfectly pitched and makes you feel good): use use use it! And try to keep that person in your life.

I would describe receiving and giving feedback as critical academic skills. Both hard ones to acquire but perhaps the most useful. It is the level 2 feedback that really needs the most practice to receive, but can be useful nevertheless. And the level 1 feedback is given by the most skilled givers. I hope I am able to be more level 1 when I speak to others but sometimes I don’t mean to be level 2. This realisation also makes me realise how hard it is to give feedback. Giving feedback takes practice. I now find it helps me to remember that we are all human, even if we are academics! Be kind and keep trying.

Author

Dr Anna Volkmer is a Speech and Language Therapist and Senior Research Fellow in Language and Cognition, Department of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London. Anna is researching Speech and language therapy interventions in language led dementia and was once voted scariest speech and language therapist (even her children agree).

Follow @volkmer_anna