Second Score – use this meta-feedback strategy

In our work and learning, the quality of creative culture can be directly linked to the quality of the feedback culture.

We might also call this a Culture of Critique with its associated processes and dispositions.

It is no real surprise that we should invest time, energy and effort in getting good at feedback. What follows is an outline of a a handy technique, I will coin Second Score, which can aid the way we receive feedback from others.

I first came across it in “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well,” co-authored by Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. Worthy of your time and standard reading for anyone interested in feedback.

It is pretty straightforward, basically we give ourselves a (you guessed it dear reader) Second Score. But importantly the assessment is about the way we received the feedback.

Let’s imagine the scenario where you have created a diagram to visualise a key concept. It will form part of larger written report you are collaborating on with your team. You pitch in the version you have drafted over the last few hours and have asked for some critique or feedback from others. That feedback arrives from a few of your team and overall it seems heavy handed and too general in detail to be useful. [PAUSE]

So at this moment just as you complete the reading of the feedback comments, you have a choice. We all have a choice in these moments. How we choose to receive the feedback. It is this reception that we can rate or assess. By explicitly thinking about your Second Score (how we receive the feedback) we increase our self awareness at this critical moment, increasing the likelihood of openness and more favourable conditions for it to be received well.

[PLAY] In this scenario we might: (a) throw up our hands and agree never to contribute a visual element to future reports (b) write down some questions in response to help clarify what needs your attention first (c) Nod our heads, retreat to our happy place, change nothing (d) delete the original files and say “I thought that is what you meant, oh fine, I can’t win!” (e) corner one of the feedback providers and ask them what their problem is.

You can hopefully see the choice that might score more favourably using our Second Score.[1] Although we might judge the quality of the feedback to have been low, we can happily give ourselves a higher Second Score in terms of how we received it. Well done you.

For us and for younger learners this type of technique will potentially develop a strong reflective habit. In many ways this falls into the meta-cognitive bucket insomuch that the act of reflecting on how we receive feedback. I am not sure if you can put the word meta in front of feedback but it feels like this is a meta-feedback technique.

So the next time you are providing feedback, and especially when we are on the receiving end consider your Second Score.

Photo by Adam Jang


  1. (a) good luck with that (b) yes definitely this one (c) no (d) see “a” (e) no that is just wrong  ↩

Empathy: An Aggregate of Personal Truths

“our capacity for empathy is as much the result of our experience and practice as it is of our genetic makeup.” ~ Alisa Del Tufo

I typically share a simple question with people I am working with regarding empathy:

Is empathy a skill?

A closed question, so a simple one right? Maybe this question breaks those rules apart. It is simple in structure and yet beguilingly complex to ponder. Del Tufo [1] answers it pretty well in my opinion. Our ability to empathise with others can be practiced, the skill of it can be refined through the use of various tools and thinking frameworks to help us. However there is still something at a deeper level we rely upon.

During a recent workshop with a school in Melbourne we discussed this very same question. Through our dialogue we explored the concept that we could never completely understand what the experience and perspective is of someone else. Walking in someone else’s shoes is as elusive as someone walking in our own.

With only a partial understanding realistically within our grasp, we explored how empathy is perhaps more about forming an understanding that is closer to someone else’s truth. However the truth we create ourselves is likely to be an aggregate of our own experiences, thoughts and emotions. Our own truths.

The empathy we have is an aggregate of our own truths.

Del Tufo explains that, “We learn empathy when we experience connectedness and surface shared values.” I think this is in small aggregated pieces, rarely do we have exactly the same experience to draw from, the complexity of our bias (and life) prohibits this in many ways. It is more a mosaic of experience we build that helps us connect with others, find common ground and shared values.


  1. Can We Teach Empathy? – Voice of Witness, 2015  ↩

3 Modes of Learner Agency

Over the last few weeks I have been exploring the concepts surrounding the premise of “student voice” in our schools. I think a much better phrase is “learner agency” as this is broader and encompasses all the learners in the community.

One of the major concerns I have with the transitional paradigm of education is the emptiness of such phrases. They may be well meaning but they are all too often tokenistic. We know we should have it, “We need more student voice!” comes the clarion call. But little is sustained, deeply embraced. Mindsets remain set. As a result students continue as, “subjects of a kingdom built by adults, rather than citizens of a democratic society who help to shape society.[1]

The concept of agency is complex, after all it is about control. Traditionally the locus of control has been firmly with the adults in school and other learning environments. When we begin to, more accurately, consider student voice or learner agency as “the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life[2],” we are beginning to take steps towards a clearer rationale for it in schools. It is not just another thing to tick off.

By better understanding the agreed modes of agency[3] perhaps we can begin to shift things more significantly towards what we intend. It is useful to consider the observable evidence of learner agency in schools with these three modes in mind:

Proxy agency – rely on others to act.

Collective agency – coordinate with others to secure what cannot be accomplished in isolation.

Personal agency – act with intention, forethought, self-reactiveness, self-reflectiveness[0] to secure a desired outcome.

Which one is more prevalent in the learning communities you know of, or work in? Which do you think best describes the realities of “student voice”?

Let’s think in metaphors for a moment to help better understand these three different modes of agency.

My son, George, has been riding his bike to school recently and as we wind our way through the bike paths he has been experimenting with his ability to ride without holding the handlebars. Much to my concern. But when he is on is own bike, controlling where he goes and how he gets there, with hands or intentionally “Look Dad, no hands!”, he is showing direct personal agency.

If George and I were in the laneways of Melbourne and were perhaps looking to travel across the city, we might choose to hire a Bike Share. Again with our own bikes we would have direct personal agency. However if we decided to jump in a rickshaw or bike taxi we would be relying on someone else to act in order to get us where we wanted to go. The control rests with someone else and, in this instance, the prospect of an economic transaction, secures a desired outcome and delivers us to our destination. This would be an example of proxy agency.

Maybe once George has longer legs he might join the weekend cyclists along Beach Road as they turn through the miles. We regularly see large groups and clubs of riders working together. These little platoons of cyclists, or pelotons, gain speed and effort efficiencies from coordinating their actions. They travel faster as a group then if they were solo riders. They are acting in an interdependent way to achieve something that would be much harder on their own. This would be an example of collective agency.

For what it is worth, I think much of what we believe to be “student voice” in schools is in fact proxy agency. The key word here is reliance. Students relying on the school staff to exert a measure of control over their lives, and thus their experience of learning. Through a better understanding of the term learner agency maybe we can reduce this reliance and help students appreciate what it takes to intentionally ride with no hands.


  1. World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, Yong Zhao, 2012  ↩
  2. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 52: 1–26 (Volume publication date February 2001)  ↩
  3. “Monitoring one’s pattern of behavior and the cognitive and environmental conditions under which it occurs is the first step toward doing something to affect it.” Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 52: 1–26  ↩