The Importance of Feedback in Wicked Environments
Feedback in 'wicked environments' ensures teachers and school leaders continue to develop...an absence of feedback is wicked!
Feedback is something I see as essential in the workplace - both giving and receiving. Without it, I know I wouldn’t be where I am today. After every failed attempt at moving into senior leadership (I finally succeeded on my fourth application), I was relentless in seeking 121 discussions with nearly everyone involved in the process. These conversations helped me understand how I could improve, what I lacked, and the developments I needed to succeed next time.
Feedback can often be difficult to hear and even harder to give, which is why high-quality, reliable feedback tends to be rare in the workplace - especially in schools. I’ve reflected on my experiences with feedback and was recently reminded of its importance when I came across the concept of wicked environments in Mark Horstman’s The Effective Manager. Horstman describes wicked environments as settings lacking feedback, which he claims (and I agree) is critical for learning, decision-making, and improvement. This idea aligns with David Epstein’s broader discussion of wicked environments in his post on “Kind” and “Wicked” Learning Environments.
Kind vs Wicked Learning Environments
Epstein distinguishes between kind and wicked environments:
Kind Learning Environments are characterised by clear rules, repetitive patterns, and immediate, accurate feedback. Activities like chess and golf fall into this category because consistent practice leads to improvement, thanks to structured tasks and direct correlations between actions and outcomes.
Wicked Learning Environments, on the other hand, feature ambiguous or incomplete rules, non-repetitive patterns, and feedback that is often delayed or misleading. In these settings, experience might reinforce incorrect lessons, making it harder to develop expertise through repetition alone.
Epstein explains that while early specialisation and deliberate practice work well in kind environments, they are less effective in wicked ones. Instead, success in wicked environments requires a broader range of experiences and skills. Schools, with their unpredictable challenges and delayed outcomes, clearly fall into the category of wicked environments. This makes it crucial for leaders to provide high-quality feedback, which is why I see the feedback model I discussed here as so important.
Feedback as a Differentiator
Mark Horstman highlights that the defining feature of wicked environments is the absence or insufficiency of feedback. In his view:
Feedback is the differentiator: Without regular, accurate feedback, individuals and teams struggle to adapt, improve, and achieve their goals effectively.
Performance stagnation: In the absence of feedback, people may repeat mistakes or fail to identify what leads to success, stalling growth.
Leadership’s role: Effective leadership hinges on creating consistent feedback loops. In schools, leaders must actively foster environments where feedback is clear, actionable, and regular to counteract the challenges of wicked environments.
By addressing the feedback gap, leaders can make schools less wicked and more kind, enabling more predictable and effective development.
The Teacher Performance Plateau
Wicked environments are challenging for expertise development because unclear and unreliable feedback hinders learning through experience. This connects to the concept of the teacher performance plateau, which suggests that teachers stop improving after their early years in the profession. While Bill Gates argued in 2009 that teacher quality doesn’t improve after three years, research by Papay and Kraft (2016) challenges this notion. They found that teachers can continue to develop, with 35% of career improvement occurring after year 10.
The study highlights that teacher growth depends heavily on the school environment. Supportive environments - those with peer collaboration, trust, and regular feedback - can help teachers navigate the complexities of their work and improve over time. Conversely, a lack of support (and no or poor feedback) inhibits development and reinforces the challenges of wicked environments.
A Path to Improvement
Navigating wicked environments requires constant re-evaluation and adjustment. Feedback is critical to this process, as it helps refine both problems and solutions through discussion, debate, and iteration. Teachers working in supportive environments with clear feedback systems benefit from ongoing professional growth. For example, rigorous evaluation systems have been shown to improve teacher performance not just during the evaluation year but in subsequent years as well.
Therefore, feedback is essential in addressing wicked environments in education because:
Wicked environments demand continuous adaptation, so feedback must be ongoing to guide improvement.
Decisions in these environments are judged through feedback, which benefits from diverse perspectives.
Each action can have lasting consequences, making reflection through feedback critical.
Challenges and responses evolve together, so feedback is central to understanding and adapting.
By fostering feedback-rich environments, schools can transform their inherently wicked nature into spaces that better support professional growth, collaboration, and student success. If you’re wondering how to introduce and deliver regular feedback effectively, have a little read through this post where I share the methods I’ve implemented based on Horstman’s Manager Tools Feedback Model.