Encourage, don’t shame: rethinking writing feedback

We know emotions and learning are closely linked. Students’ emotional reactions to feedback on their written work are often especially acute and can play a significant role in their development as writers. One of the most prevalent negative emotions in this context is shame. 

I wanted to know how we could hone our feedback practice to make sure we’re triggering positive affective responses that support development. Taking affect theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s exploration of shame in learning as a theoretical framework, I asked how far shame attends apparent or perceived failure, and how far such affective responses demotivate students in the development of their academic writing. What I found out was that it’s not just what we say, but how we say it, that really matters. 

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In current secondary education culture, shame appears to be an almost inevitable experience, the result of competition for grades among students – and between institutions – and a content-heavy curriculum. This is in the broader context of a perceived need for repeated and rapid transformations of the self to meet the demands of a volatile and unpredictable employment landscape, along with a narrative of the self as a product in a competitive marketplace.

The move from this educational environment to a foundation year programme has the potential to prompt feelings of shame. Students might arrive with an existing sense of failure and attendant shame. And that is definitely something we’ve seen on our programme.

In her 2003 book Touching Feeling, Sedgwick explores 1960s psychologist Sylvan Tomkins’ shame theory. Tomkins characterises shame as an affect motivated by the experience of being wrong, and argues that the ability to be wrong and to feel shame acts as a motivational force for learning.

For Sedgwick, Tomkins’ theory is interesting but it’s also highly problematic because it favours a right/wrong, means-end model of learning. And, of course, the psychological cost is too high. Its conclusions about the function of shame in learning are reflective of a 1960s culture in which learning is a pretty brutal experience. 

This is important for us because, as I have suggested, this culture has not gone away – or, rather, it has returned with a vengeance. 

So, with this in mind, I engaged a mixed-gender focus group of foundation year students, whose average attainments ranged from a first to a third, to help me explore the role of shame in their responses to feedback on their writing.

I interviewed students individually, looking with them at the comments on essays for which they achieved their highest and lowest grades. I encouraged students to use natural language to describe their feelings as they read the comments, and I also introduced the Geneva Emotion Wheel to help them articulate their affective responses. 

In analysing the interview results, I asked: is shame present, what are its manifestations, and what effects does it produce? 

Shame: manifestations and effects

Shame and error

Students feel negative emotion and often shame responses when their writing is criticised. Excessive annotation that repeatedly points out mistakes can create shame and fear even before the student has read the comment. 

Shame and language

Shame is stimulated when the language used is harsh, blunt or overtly negative, particularly if it’s couched in objective-sounding terms. Language that could be interpreted as personal attack or insult can also trigger shame. Using terms like “awkward” to describe writing triggers an experience of social ridicule. The language of failure is particularly strong in stimulating shame, evoking a sense of public disapproval. But it’s often deployed by markers unwittingly, as part of academic discourse: “your introduction fails to…” The same effects occur when feedback uses unfamiliar language that students don’t understand. 

Shame and criticism 

Shame is more likely to be sustained if the feedback is critical and does not include advice, makes unrealistic suggestions, gives unclear or vague advice, is too brief or uses shorthand students aren’t familiar with. This kind of critique creates a threshold but offers no way to cross it. Students are left feeling helpless and disempowered, reporting sensations of overwhelm and paralysis.  

Feedback without shame

• Uses dialogic language, engaging in conversation with the student, presenting a personal response without tipping over into subjective-sounding judgement. Helpful formulations include “I think”; “I wonder if…”; “You might…”
• Is not excessive, providing a limited, manageable number of annotations.
• Enables students to recognise how and why they could adjust or change their reading, writing or thinking.
• Provides clear, concrete advice that the student can follow up on independently: a process they can follow or a course of action they can take.
• Provides advice not as well as but rather than critique.
• Enables the student to value the self who wrote the essay and to feel integrated with that former self.

A safe space

When we provide feedback that enables continuity, that avoids the lesions that sever the self writing and the self reflecting on the writing, we give the student agency in the process of transformation. Shame does the opposite. Students have to work hard to right themselves after shaming feedback, and some never recover from it. Let’s provide a feedback context that’s a safe space for experimentation and “mistakes”, and offers a route to self-actualisation.

Isabelle Parkinson is lead for integrated foundation year humanities, arts and social sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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