Functions of Feedback - Physical Education Essay

According to Chen (2001), the most valuable guide that a coach can give to his athletes is giving them feedback. There are two types of feedback that is intrinsic feedback and the augmented feedback. Intrinsic feedback is the one that a person gets as a result of own personal actions its artificial in nature while the augmented feedback is that which is received from another party which is an external source. Feedback can be used for three primary purpose that is motivation, to correct errors that are in a given information and to offer reinforcement or punishment to people.

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Feedback can be used as means of motivating athletes towards the performance of a given task or duty. A simple compliment like for example like you are doing great as compared to last time when used as a feedback will motivate a student or an athlete to put more effort in his performance. Feedback can also help in motivation through setting and evaluating of goals. The feedback that one gets from their supervisors or from within makes one be in a position to assess whether he is making progress towards achieving them. This is my no 1 reason as to why I give feedback to my students while teaching and I mostly exercise this in my teaching.

Secondly, feedback serves as a tool for reinforcement and as well as punishment. Reinforcement refers to a situation that increases the possibility of an event re-occurring under the same conditions as the previous one. While on the other hand punishment is any activity that will result in a particular outcome not to be experienced in the future. If an action is accompanied by a reward, it will tend to be repeated in future, but if it is accompanied by punishment, it will not be repeated in the future. For example, when a teacher punishes the students for coming to school late will make them not to repeat that again and start coming to school early. This is the no 3 reason as to why I give feedback to my students and I rarely do that as well.

The last usage of feedback is that it can be used as a means of correction of an error in a given information. Through feedback, a learner is given essential information which guides him. It is of great importance during the early stages of learning whereby a student is prone to make errors most of the times hence through feedback a teacher or coach can correct him on how a particular task should be carried out. This acts my no 2 reason as to why I give feedback to my students.

As a teacher, I believe that through my feedback I can motivate my students. For example, after every exam, I compare the result of each student with their previous results and complement those who have improved and those who have not I always motivate them by telling them that they should believe in themselves and that next time they will do it better. I give reinforcement to those who have improved their results by giving them presents and also taking them on a trip so that even next time they can still do well. I believe that my feedback is of great importance to my students as a teacher because I can correct them so that next time they do not perform the same mistake I revise with them the assessments which they fail so as to rectify the mistake they were making. I believe I need to improve in the area of giving punishment to my students as a form of feedback and stop fearing that through the punishment I will be hurting their feelings but rather consider it as a way of helping them.