Feedback Loops
June 8, 2007
It never ceases to amaze me how thoughts in one arena connect so naturally to another. In the case, it was feedback loops in marketing that reminded me of double loop learning, performance assessment and what it takes to make change happen.
Note: Apologies to my small but loyal readership on not having written in so long. The last couple of weeks have been inordinately busy! But the school year is almost over and hopefully, I’ll have more time to think!
I’ve been observing some first grade reading fluency tests for a project I’m working on with my brother. The students are being recorded and I’m amused by how often they ask to hear what they sounded like. (Sadly, the computer in the room they’re working has no headphones or speakers, so they can’t hear themselves yet … :/ … but it’s nice they’ll be able to eventually!) Kids are so unabashedly self-centered about things like this. We all know that when we think we’ve done a good job at something we want to ‘relive’ it – often over and over – but as adults, we’re usually too cool to say, “Can I see/hear that again?” What we forget -- and I was reminded about this by Tad’s post “Closing the Loop” on Noah’s blog -- is that the feedback loop is a critical part of the learning/change process. Tad is talking about marketers creating a dialogue with consumers, and he’s absolutely right, because dialogue creates a relationship, and as we all know by now, it’s all about the relationship!
But feedback loops are also a vital part of learning for students. When they read aloud, they’re performing. While they’re most likely doing their best, they’re not necessarily thinking reflectively about what their best is. It’s only when they hear the recording played back that they have a chance to think about how they’ve done and what they might do to improve.
The feedback loop is also motivational because there’s a real, and in this case, permanent, audience. That reading is recorded for posterity, to share with reading specialists, at parent conferences, anywhere. What’s more, if, as is the trend these days, the child is tested frequently, to evaluate progress, there’s not only an opportunity to motivate the student using his/her own progress, but a built-in mechanism for articulating instruction from grade to grade, based on the individual student’s needs.
All of this reminds me of my first exposure to double loop learning, from back in my thesis days, and I wanted to mention Chris Argyris, whose work inspired my interest in organizational learning and reflective practice. There’s nothing like good thinking to get my heart rate up!
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