A photo of a pomegranate tree with a sun star that was submitted to Click Community [Image courtesy of the author].
Sharing work, requesting feedback, and offering critique are important parts of the work that we do as teachers and scholars. We require our students to share their work with us, so that we can provide feedback and assign grades. We ask our students to evaluate our teaching for us to gauge the effectiveness of our pedagogy and identify ways of improving our teaching. We deliver conference talks and lectures in venues that encourage colleagues to ask questions and offer suggestions, and we submit our own writing for peer review through journal and manuscript submissions with the hope that it will generate productive revisions and elicit more robust scholarly contributions. In turn, we are often asked to provide comments on works-in-progress for colleagues or official reviews for editors, and we comprise the very audiences who sit in a room listening to new papers and asking questions. Far from being a solitary practice, academic work – even writing – is a communal effort, built on the generosity of teachers and colleagues who are eager to help improve the work of others and the willingness of scholars to hear critiques of their own work with an open mind and to take them seriously.
Academic discourse, however, has a reputation of being highly critical, and even sometimes mean or vindictive. Given this context, even well-intentioned critical questions or reviews can come across as attacks on a person or their research rather than honest attempts at clarifying an argument, resolving an inaccuracy, or improving the work. Cultural differences (of fields, but also of countries and other contexts) as well as biases of all sorts also condition how academic discourse unfolds, its tone and affect. A conference or workshop that exudes an ethos of collaboration is applauded for its countercultural feel, rather than assumed to be a routine occurrence. In my own scholarly practice, I attempt to balance kindness, rigor, creativity, and, above all, integrity to our subject material and the people who study it when providing feedback. Still, striking the proper tone can be challenging.
There is no single way of offering feedback. Indeed, there shouldn’t be. I don’t approach a first-year undergraduate reading response in the same way as I do that same student’s end-of-term research paper; nor a first rough draft of a graduate student’s dissertation chapter, submitted in my dissertation seminar for workshopping, as I would a published book by a senior scholar for which I am writing a review for a journal in my field. Each person, at each stage of their academic journey and at each juncture of any given assignment or research project, needs guidance at the appropriate level.
Moreover, the best feedback isn’t always the most glowing. For as much I want to offer constructive feedback in gentle ways, I also do not think it is productive to applaud work that is unconvincing or contains errors. Sometimes, the most respectful way of engaging with a student’s or colleague’s work is to take it seriously enough to disagree with it or challenge its methods or conclusions, “for the sake of heaven” (that is, for the sake of the work itself, rather than our own egos, grudges, or maneuvering).
If we are to individually tailor our responses, how can we figure out what sort of feedback someone is seeking?
In a rather circuitous way last summer, I came to understand that perhaps the best way of engaging the work of students and colleagues is for all of us to be explicit about what kind of feedback we’re looking for, and to respect what everyone says they are seeking.
A few months ago, I joined an online photography community (Click Community), in an attempt to improve my photography skills. For a while, photography has been my hobby but I don’t have formal training and I often find myself with questions. I didn’t know whom to ask for guidance, until I finally found a place where I could learn from the expertise and experience of other photographers in a supportive way. This community is comprised of individuals with a broad range of experience – from those who recently bought their first camera and are still learning how to shoot in manual mode to award-winning professional photographers with successful businesses.
As I got to know the photography website, I noticed that one of the most compelling features of the site is its deliberateness in catering to different people with a variety of goals. That includes building into the site diverse ways of sharing work, soliciting feedback, and offering critique, and it provided me with an intriguing model that could be applied to academic contexts as well. Of particular interest to me were three “photo sharing” forums, each with a different purpose: “Picture Share,” “Beginner Photo Feedback,” and “Serious Critique.” Let me explain.
The “Picture Share” forum is meant to provide members with a chance to post photos without requesting critical feedback. Members post recent photographs they have taken, often with commentary, simply for the sake of sharing with a supportive community. For example, a member might share photos of a recent vacation, or a wedding they shot, or samples from new underwater camera equipment they were excited to try. Photographers at every level post in this forum. What they all have in common is an interest in sharing their photographs without receiving suggestions for improving them. It is a way for them to share work of which they’re proud with others (even when they can recognize ways in which they might also improve it), and it is a low-stakes way for others to partake in the work of peers and sometimes to learn from their different styles and stories. Members might reply by noting elements of the photographs that they especially like, such as the lighting or composition, or remarking about how fun an event looked, or thanking the poster for sharing. The main purpose, as the forum’s name suggests, is “sharing.”
Another forum, titled “Beginner Photo Feedback,” is designed to provide an opportunity for new photographers, or those learning a new technique or technology, to post a photo and ask for suggestions. Posters are required to upload both their “straight out of camera” image as well as their edited photo, and to specify what type of feedback they desire. Someone might post a question about whether their cropping could be improved or ask for suggestions about white balance or composition. The responses that are provided do not assume full knowledge of photography, and try to avoid jargon. The tone is one of a teacher guiding a new student, with patience. Responses are both supportive and helpful, suggesting specific editing tweaks, explaining key composition concepts that could be applied to improve the image, or linking to relevant tutorials. Sometimes the original poster will re-post an image after having taken the feedback into account, and ask for follow-up advice.
The third forum is labeled “Serious Critique,” and that is the place for the most rigorous engagement. Here, responses provide nuanced feedback that assumes that the photographer already has a solid grasp of the art of photography and is looking for advice that is specific and specialized, aimed at improving a particular skill or image and taking it to the next level. The tone is still supportive, but this is the place where one cannot be offended if someone responds with constructive criticism rather than applause.
What would happen if, at the beginning of each conference paper, seminar, or workshop, we signaled to our audience the type of feedback we were hoping to elicit? Sometimes, a person might be excited to share a new discovery but not (yet) interested in hard questions. At other times, a person might be especially eager for suggestions of other sources or previous scholarship to explore, because they are at the beginning stage of a project. And sometimes a person is sharing work that they specifically want to undergo serious critique to test if an argument is persuasive or identify areas that could be improved. When one seeks serious critique, it can feel like a let-down to simply receive applause, just as it can be jarring to excitedly share a new discovery only to be met exclusively with harsh criticism or skepticism.
Such signaling could happen in a variety of ways, in both teaching and scholarship. It sometimes already occurs informally. For example, when we grade undergraduate student reflections based mainly on whether they are handed in according to expectations of length and timeliness, it means that the purpose of the assignment is to share ideas and generate discussion, rather than to evaluate the substance of those reflections. When graduate students have passed the many hurdles involved in completing their dissertations and finally arrive at their dissertation defense, the conversation is often aimed at identifying the particular strengths of the project and the areas that can be improved during revisions for book publication. At a book launch, we celebrate an accomplishment rather than analyze the index.
We can also design better assignments when we articulate for ourselves the modes of feedback we hope that those assignments generate – some assignments might be designed for idea sharing and spurring creativity (in which case critique can be counterproductive), while others might be crafted for improving writing or oral communication (in which case specific critique is most helpful). In the realm of scholarly exchange, we could also, at times, formally label our talks (e.g. “simply sharing,” “seeking friendly feedback,” “requesting serious critique”), or be explicit about what we are looking for when we share our research with colleagues. But even if we do none of this, acknowledging that different contexts call for different forms of engagement can serve as a helpful reminder to be sensitive to what others want or need from us (or what we wish from others), and to cater our engagement to the circumstance and the person.
Sarit Kattan Gribetz is Associate Professor in the Theology Department at Fordham University. She is the author of Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2020), and currently writing a new book titled Jerusalem: A Feminist History.