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In this edition of ⚗️DistillED, we're continuing our Poor Proxies for Learning series — a deep dive into the five classroom behaviours we often mistake for evidence of learning, but which don't guarantee it has occurred.
This series is inspired by the work of Professor Rob Coe, whose influential framework has challenged the way teachers interpret what's really happening in their classrooms. Each edition focuses on one proxy in depth — unpacking the research, and giving you practical strategies to move beyond it.
This week we're tackling Proxy 3: Students are getting attention — feedback and explanations.
Of all the proxies, this one feels the most like real teaching. You've circulated the room, identified misconceptions, written detailed comments, and given clear guidance. Surely that counts? It does — but only if students act on it. In this edition, we're going to explore why feedback given and feedback used are two very different things. Let's take a gander!
In this edition
📊 Do Now: Quick Poll!
After giving students written feedback, what typically happens next in your classroom?
What is The Feedback Gap?
The Feedback Gap is the distance between feedback given and feedback used. It's what happens when a teacher invests significant time and energy into writing comments, delivering explanations, and correcting misconceptions — only for that feedback to make no lasting difference to student learning.
Feedback is one of the most powerful tools in a teacher's repertoire. But it is also one of the most misunderstood. The act of giving feedback is not the same as the act of learning from it — and confusing the two is Proxy 3 from Professor Rob Coe's framework of poor proxies for learning.
The problem isn't feedback itself. Research consistently shows that high-quality feedback is among the highest-leverage strategies available to teachers. The problem is when we treat the delivery of feedback as the endpoint, rather than the response to feedback. As Dylan Wiliam — one of the world's leading experts on formative assessment — puts it:
This reframes everything. The question isn't "Did I give good feedback?" — it's "Did my feedback cause students to think and act differently?" If students read a comment, nod, and move on without changing anything — the feedback has not worked, regardless of how carefully it was crafted.
Here's a quick look at what The Feedback Gap IS and IS NOT:
👎 The Feedback Gap is:
Feedback as a Workload Exercise → Detailed written comments that students read once and never return to
Praise Without Direction → Telling students what went well without giving them a clear next step
Next Steps Without Time → Writing actionable comments but never building in the lesson time to act on them
Explanation Without Response → Re-teaching a concept without checking whether understanding has changed
👍 Feedback That Works Looks Like:
Feedback That Causes Thinking → Comments and questions that require students to reason, revise, and respond
Time Built In → Dedicated lesson time where students act on feedback before moving on
Visible Change → Student work looks different after feedback than it did before
Dialogue, Not Monologue → Feedback is a two-way process — students respond, clarify, and demonstrate understanding
Why Does The Feedback Gap Matter?
The Feedback Gap matters because it makes one of the most time-consuming parts of teaching — marking and feedback — largely ineffective. Teachers invest enormous energy into feedback that students don't use, while the learning gap it was meant to close remains wide open.
Dylan Wiliam's research on formative assessment is the essential framework here. Wiliam distinguishes between feedback as information and feedback as a recipe for future action. Information tells a student how they did. A recipe tells them what to do next — and crucially, gives them the opportunity to do it.
This distinction exposes a common classroom pattern: teachers give feedback, students receive it passively, and the lesson moves on. Without a structured opportunity to respond, even the most insightful feedback evaporates. Hattie and Timperley's (2007) landmark review of feedback research found that while feedback has a strong average effect on learning, its impact varies enormously — and feedback that doesn't prompt action consistently underperforms.
Take a look at the diagram below — it shows what a complete feedback loop looks like when it's working. Notice that the teacher's comment is only one step in the cycle. Learning happens in the response, not the receipt.
The gap between giving and using is also where student confidence is quietly damaged. When students receive detailed feedback and don't know what to do with it — or feel overwhelmed by it — they disengage. Feedback becomes something that happens to them rather than something that helps them.
This is why the measure of great feedback isn't the quality (or length) of the comment — it's the quality of the response. We must design feedback for action, so the gap begins to close.
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How Do I Close The Feedback Gap?
Closing the Feedback Gap isn't about giving more feedback — it's about designing feedback so that students are required to think, respond, and act on it. The goal is to make feedback the start of learning, not the end of marking.
In typical ⚗️DistillED fashion, here are six practical strategies to help:
Strategy | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
Strategy 1: Build in Response Time
| The single most important shift you can make is structural — feedback without response time is incomplete. When feedback is returned, begin the lesson with a focused block of time where students read, think, and respond before any new content is introduced. This signals that feedback is part of the learning process, not an admin task. | Return marked work at the start of the lesson. Give students 8–10 minutes of silent response time: "Read my comments carefully. Make at least one specific improvement to your work before we move on." 👉 Read how whole class feedback can make response time efficient and high-impact in the DistillED edition on Whole Class Feedback |
Strategy 2: Write Questions, Not Just Comments
| Comments tell students what you noticed. Questions make them do something about it. Replacing evaluative statements ("Your analysis lacks depth") with targeted questions ("What evidence could you add here to support this point?") turns feedback into a thinking task — which is where the learning happens. | Instead of writing "You need to develop this idea further", write "What would happen if the opposite were true? Add a sentence that explores this." The student must think — not just read. |
Strategy 3: Use the Two Stars and a Targeted Question Model
| Feedback is most useful when it balances affirmation with direction. Two specific strengths (not generic praise) combined with one targeted question — rather than a correction — ensures feedback is both encouraging and cognitively demanding. The question is the engine of improvement. | ★ "Your opening sentence immediately establishes the argument — well done." ★ "Your use of evidence in paragraph two is well chosen." ❓ "How could you connect your final paragraph back to the question more explicitly?" |
Strategy 4: Make the Change Visible
| When students respond to feedback in a different colour pen, in a dedicated response box, or with a before/after annotation, the change becomes visible — to them and to you. This builds metacognitive awareness and makes it easy to check whether feedback has been used at a glance. | Ask students to respond to feedback in green pen directly beneath your comment. Their response should explain what they changed and why. When you next check books, you can see immediately whether the feedback loop is closed. 👉 Read how peer feedback can extend the feedback loop beyond the teacher in the DistillED edition on Peer Feedback |
Strategy 5: Check the Response, Not Just the Work
| When you next review student work, look first at what students did with your feedback — not at the work itself. Did they respond thoughtfully? Did they make the change? Did they understand why? This reframes your role from marker to coach, and sends a clear message to students: your response to feedback matters as much as the original work. | When circulating after response time, ask: "Show me what you changed and tell me why." This two-part prompt requires both action and reflection — closing the feedback loop completely. |
Strategy 6: Make Feedback Detective Work
| When feedback hands students the solution, they perform a repair. When it makes them detect the fault, they build understanding. Feedback becomes detective work when it withholds the correction and replaces it with a clue — a symbol, a question, a location marker — that requires the student to identify the error, diagnose the cause, and decide on the fix independently. | Instead of writing "This sentence is a run-on — split it into two", simply underline the sentence and write "??" in the margin. The student must identify the problem and decide how to fix it. For extended writing, try: "One of your three arguments is not supported by evidence. Find it and fix it." — the student has to read critically before they can act. |
Feedback is only as powerful as what students do with it. Give it with purpose, build in time to respond, and make the thinking visible. That's when the gap closes — and the learning begins.
Until next week!
— Jamie
If you want more:
👉 Read the original DistillED edition on Poor Proxies for Learning
👉 Read Part 1 of this series — Poor Proxies #1: The Busy Trap
👉 Read Part 2 of this series — Poor Proxies #2: The Engagement Myth
👉 Explore the The Attention and Hard Thinking one-page guides
👉 Get the DistillED Playbooks for practical, evidence-informed classroom practices
📥 Free One-Page Guide
Poor Proxies for Learning One-Page Guide
This edition is part of the Poor Proxies for Learning series. To help you see the full picture, download the original free one-page guide — a practical overview of all five proxies, what they look like in the classroom, and what to do instead.
⚗️DistillED+ Exclusive Content
This week, ⚗️DistillED+ members get access to The Feedback Gap CPD PowerPoint, Strategy Checklist, and an exclusive One-Page Guide — going deeper than the free guide with a full focus on Proxy 3. It breaks down how to design feedback that causes thinking, build response time into your lessons, and make the feedback loop visible so you can see — and students can feel — the difference it makes.
