Teachers provide more candid feedback after delivering wise feedback messages

Abstract “Wise feedback” occurs when teachers preface feedback with messages that convey high expectations and confidence in students’ abilities to meet them. Feedback presented in this “wise” way benefits all students, but especially those from historically marginalized groups. The present study tested whether delivering wise feedback also improves the quality of feedback that teachers deliver. It might do so by alleviating teachers’ self-presentation concerns. White middle school and high school teachers (N = 227) from the U.S. Midwest and the U.S. West Coast believed they were supplying feedback to a Black, Latino/a/e, or White student on a poorly written essay that the student drafted. Before supplying feedback, teachers declared one of three feedback orientations to their supposed student: wise feedback, emphasizing the benefits of candid, challenging evaluations; sensitive feedback, emphasizing support and warmth; and neutral feedback, addressing teaching practices unrelated to evaluation. “Wise feedback” teachers provided more extensive open ended feedback and more critical ratings-based feedback than did the other teachers. They also provided more critical open-ended feedback than did “sensitive feedback” teachers. These feedback framing results occurred regardless of students’ ethnicity. Teachers, across messaging conditions, provided more positive ratings to a Black writer than to a White writer, reconfirming the positive feedback bias. Ancillary analyses found that teachers with more experience and those who standardize their classroom feedback (e.g., regularly use grading rubrics) provided more critical feedback during the experiment. Although wise feedback messaging increased teachers’ candor to all students, it might especially benefit students from historically marginalized groups.