Building a Feedback Culture

For most students, feedback does not feel like support. It feels like judgement.

Somewhere along the way, feedback in classrooms became synonymous with red marks, rankings, and remarks that linger longer than the lesson itself. Students learn early that feedback often arrives only when something is wrong. Over time, even well-intentioned comments begin to feel personal, evaluative, and final.

Yet, when we step outside the classroom and into life, an important truth becomes evident: life does not come with a marks card. There are no grades for relationships, leadership, creativity, or resilience. What life offers instead is continuous feedback, sometimes subtle, sometimes uncomfortable, but always present. If schools are meant to prepare children for life, then it is worth relooking at how we approach evaluation itself.

In classrooms that are truly thriving, students actively seek feedback. They ask questions, invite suggestions, and revise their work with confidence. The difference is not intelligence or ability. It is culture. The real challenge before us is not how to give better feedback, but how to build environments where feedback feels safe, useful, and genuinely wanted. This challenge, I have realised, does not disappear after school.

Removing Mind Blocks

My personal experience of working with multiple generations of colleagues through my work at School Cinema and TAISI has been that most people retain their old-school habit that if any work is given to them, they feel it is a test and that they must answer it all by themselves. Seeking inputs from others and working collaboratively is a huge challenge. In fact, the biggest hurdle to high-quality work I see is the hesitation to seek help. Receiving feedback from people is, in my view, the best way to seek help in a creative world where quality truly matters.

What is uncomfortable but critical, to acknowledge is that teachers are not immune to this mindset either. Many educators resist feedback just as much as students do. They hesitate to seek input from peers and are often cautious about inviting feedback from students. Feedback is sometimes seen as evaluation rather than growth. Yet in a rapidly changing educational landscape, this resistance quietly limits professional evolution. Teachers who do not engage with feedback, risk teaching the same way year after year not because they lack commitment, but because they lack reflective mirrors. Feedback from colleagues and students is not a threat to authority, it is essential to staying relevant, responsive, and continuously improving.

Epicentre of Resistance

If adults and educators struggle with feedback, it is worth asking where these habits were formed. More often than not, the answer lies in schools. Students associate feedback with failure because classrooms have traditionally rewarded correctness over growth. When mistakes are penalised rather than explored, learners protect themselves by avoiding feedback altogether. Silence feels safer than exposure. A strong feedback culture begins with psychological safety. This means separating the learner from the learning. It means language that communicates, “This is about the work, not about you.” It also means visibly valuing effort, revision, and persistence, not just outcomes. When classrooms shift from asking “Who got it right?” to “What did we learn from this?”, feedback starts to feel like information rather than judgement.

Framing a Feedback

How feedback is framed matters deeply. Tone often carries more weight than intent. Feedback that sounds evaluative shuts learning down; feedback that sounds directional opens it up. When feedback is positioned as next steps rather than verdicts, students respond with openness rather than fear. One of the most effective yet underused practices is self-reflection before feedback. When students and teachers are encouraged to assess their own work first, they move from defence to dialogue. Simple questions such as What worked? What challenged me? What would I do differently next time? build ownership and maturity.

This belief has strongly influenced my work in learning design. In all School Cinema workbooks, we intentionally build simple, age-appropriate structures for self-evaluation, peer evaluation, and teacher or parent feedback. This is deliberate. Feedback and evaluation do not always have to come from a superior. Some of the most meaningful learning happens when students reflect on their own choices, receive perspectives from peers, and engage in conversations with adults who guide rather than judge. This mirrors real life far more accurately than one-directional assessment ever can.

Conclusion

A healthy feedback culture also encourages people to actively seek feedback rather than passively receive it. In strong classrooms, feedback is not something done to learners, it is something they ask for. When teachers model this behaviour, the message is powerful: learning never stops. Feedback must also energise learning. Too much feedback overwhelms. Vague feedback demotivates. Effective feedback highlights strengths, identifies one clear area for improvement, and offers a visible next step. Energy comes from progress, not perfection.

If schools can reimagine evaluation not as a final judgement, but as an ongoing conversation, we prepare children far better for the real world, a world where feedback is constant, learning is lifelong, and growth is deeply personal. When students and teachers learn to welcome feedback, they learn something far more important than content. They learn how to adapt, collaborate, and live more fulfilling lives. And that, perhaps, is the most meaningful outcome education can offer.