There is another kind of feedback that I think is important: feedback from the student to the teacher. Just because they might be improving, there is no way to know which part of our teaching or which particular approach is working best for them. It’s an exact correlate to Robert’s examples of specific feedback to students.

I wrote about this briefly on my own blog: Why feedback is important when teaching and learning songs – http://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2010/02/why-feedback-is-important-when-teaching.html

And thanks for the link to Annie Murphy Paul, definitely food for thought.

Chris

Next I’d be curious about whether female teachers (on the average) tend to be more naturally inclined to give positive feedback than male teachers. I suspect so. I’ve known several male teachers who won’t teach anything below the late intermediate / early advanced level, while I’ve known almost no female teachers who similarly restrict themselves. In light of your post here, I can’t help wondering if part (or much?) of this is actually due to feedback tendencies rather than interest in level of repertoire and/or comfort with certain stages in musical development.

Also remember that giving positive feedback is a nurturing thing to do, and if we consider the natural association of nurturing with the female gender (I think this is more than just a stereotype), we can draw a connection that way too. Females listen to each other vent, while males have a hard time leaving it at just listening – they try to jump in and find the solution to problems. It seems to me that the way males most naturally “nurture” other people is precisely by offering negative criticism.

In other words, I suspect males need to read your blog post most for the benefit of their younger students, while females would need to read your blog post most for the benefit of their advanced ones.