The Power of Feedback Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of Educational Feedback Research
verifiedmedium profile · Frontiers in Psychology · 2020
Wisniewski, Benedikt; Zierer, Klaus; Hattie, John
How this was studied
A meta-analytic synthesis — it pools many primary studies rather than running a single design, so there is no single-study diagram.
What this article reports
The findings we extracted from this work, normalized into Principia’s relationship form (X → Y). Each feeds the synthesized models below.
Models this article informs
The meta-analytic priors this article contributes evidence to — its place in the broader synthesis.
In the authors’ words
The article’s own abstract.
A meta-analysis (435 studies, k = 994, N > 61,000) of empirical research on the effects of feedback on student learning was conducted with the purpose of replicating and expanding the Visible Learning research (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Hattie, 2009; Hattie & Zierer, 2019) from meta-synthesis. Overall results based on a random-effects model indicate a medium effect (d = 0.48) of feedback on student learning, but the significant heterogeneity in the data shows that feedback cannot be understood as a single consistent form of treatment. A moderator analysis revealed that the impact is substantially influenced by the information content conveyed. Furthermore, feedback has higher impact on cognitive and motor skills outcomes than on motivational and behavioral outcomes. We discuss these findings in the light of the assumptions made in The power of feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). In general, the results suggest that feedback has rightly become a focus of teaching research and practice. However, they also point towards the necessity of interpreting different forms of feedback as independent measures.
What the literature says about it
Attributed, open-access quotes from other works that cite this article, plus the citation-graph verdict tally. Corroborations and disputes, in one place — the honest-broker view.
supports “Feedback can play a pivotal role in performance and learning, but its effectiveness varies greatly among students (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Wisniewski et al., 2020).”
supports “…enable them to understand their learning development better, and improve their performance via the acquisition of new skills and tasks, especially when it is nonevaluative, supportive, timely, and specific (Wisniewski et al., 2020; Hattie & Gan, 2011; Adie et al., 2018; Wu & Schunn, 2021).”
supports “Research spanning a variety of fields and subjects (e.g., medicine, aviation and nuclear power) demonstrates the positive impact of feed-back on performance improvement [76 – 80].”
disputes “Although feedback is seen as an invaluable part of the writing process, it does not necessarily always lead to improved writing performance (Graham, 2018; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Wisniewski et al., 2020).”
Ancillary research
Neighbouring works in the citation graph around this article.
- 10.1080/0969594x.2025.2467676
- 10.46827/ejse.v9i3.5095
- 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2024.100470
- 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101745
Assembled from Principia’s registry — bibliographic record, extracted effect sizes, the models they inform, and open-access citing literature.