Recently I’ve been thinking about giving feedback, partly spurred by Kino’s post. I’ve spent a lot of my time over the years thinking (and reading) about what feedback should do and should look like, as well as what it (typically) does do and does look like. This is for a lot of reasons: my own struggles with receiving feedback, prep for teaching writing-instructive courses, helping colleagues, procrastination, etc. Maybe I’ll talk about this more at some point.
But here I wanted to talk about how we give feedback. Last week I met with a colleague to give feedback on one of their papers. It happened to be a topic I knew reasonably well and had my own thoughts on. I read the paper and made some notes about my thoughts. The colleague seemed most concerned about getting it into a specific journal, so I focused primarily on organization and the central thesis (they are a pretty good writer mechanically).
They had also recently presented the work to some other (mutual) colleagues. In the course of chatting with one of these other colleagues–we talk regularly–I mentioned that I was reading this paper. We chatted briefly about the presentation and its reception, which was helpful for organizing some of my thoughts.
A few days later I met with the colleague who wrote the paper and we talked about it. I didn’t send anything in advance, which is pretty normal for me, and overall it wasn’t all that different from how I’ve done things in the past. We started with what the goal was, what background I might be missing, and went from there into specific feedback if/when it was relevant. What really struck me this time, though, was how much my feedback itself changed. Some of this was due to misunderstandings on my part, some related to other work the colleague was doing, some because of conflicts with other feedback, and some about background motivations. All of this came out during the conversation. Overall, the meeting felt pretty collaborative*, focused on developing a (specific) plan for how to address the problems we thought were important for their goals. We–mostly they–generated a written plan for what to do.
This case struck me as a particularly stark example of how much feedback can change when you work more collaboratively to generate it. And not just change, but improve. And, at least for me, it was more fun. I felt like I was more directly helping the colleague sort through the feedback**–we all know not all feedback is helpful–and I got a better sense for where they were coming from and trying to go. It felt like a learning experience for me, too.
I wasn’t given feedback in this spirit, at least until recently, and my impression is that it’s fairly uncommon. It also didn’t really sink in how different this way of giving feedback is from what I did get, which was generally one of:
- line-by-line corrections/comments in an email or word doc
- marginalia on a PDF or written copy of my paper
- walking through line-by-line feedback in person
- big-picture comments on the perceived viability of the argument (email or spoken)
- Pedantic criticism of grammar and style until, in exasperation, I am told the writing is too unclear for feedback to be given
I really struggled to turn this sort of feedback into actionable plans. It wasn’t until recently that I started to figure this out, and it was mostly by accident. I started waiting to read feedback until a friend could join me. At the time, I was sitting on things like advisor feedback or referee reports for (at least) weeks because I didn’t feel emotionally capable of reading it. Naturally, my work–not to mention self-image–were impacted. (I had some Big Feels moments in response to feedback early-ish in my PhD, to which I still occasionally have flashbacks, but that’s another story.) What happened, though, was I began learning how to understand and plan responses to feedback. This helped with the emotional part, too.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this. My impression is that understanding and responding to criticism is especially hard for people not steeped in the academic and philosophical culture. And, that most philosophers don’t see a problem, let alone agree upon a solution.
So what surprised me, I guess, was how natural it felt to give feedback the way I did. Looking back at how I’ve taught writing courses, it makes sense–I taught students to first get clear on what their classmates’ goals were, and how that informed what they’d written, before giving feedback, let alone suggesting actions.*** I was even conscious that I was doing this as a step towards inclusiveness. I just apparently hadn’t internalized how out-of-the-ordinary this would have seemed to me as a student, where “feedback” usually meant something more like “list of problems” than “collaborative problem identification and solving.”
Anyways, main point (I think): I think the way(s) we give feedback not only influence its reception but also its quality. I’m going to keep thinking about how I give feedback, why I do it those ways, and what I can do better.
* If you’re reading this, hopefully I’m not totally off-base!!
** To head off the cringe, I hope: the colleague would be doing just fine without me.
*** My writing courses make learning to give and receive feedback an explicit learning objective, so we spend a fair amount of time on how to do it.
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