Positive feedback loops in Further Education

Posted on September 28th, 2022
Self-Improving System Project
Self-Improving System Project

One of the first things you encounter when you delve into Systems Thinking is the concept of feedback loops. These loops can be “positive” or “negative”, but I’ve found that this terminology is pretty unhelpful in conversation, as most people naturally take the every-day use of these words and assume that “positive feedback” must be good and “negative feedback” must be bad.  This isn’t what the technical terms mean, so a better vocabulary is “reinforcing feedback loops” and “balancing feedback loops”.

Interestingly even the term “feedback” has caused confusion in some of my interviewees. The engineers amongst them recognise the concept of course – a familiar everyday use of this is “I’m getting feedback on Zoom” where you get a loop of a mic picking up a sound which gets distorted and picked up and amplified again and so on, ending up with screeching Jimi Hendrix style feedback on the audio.  

But most people have just taken ‘feedback’ to mean “giving your opinion”; as in “employers should give feedback to providers” or “my tutor gave me feedback on my lesson”. These sorts of customer feedback or observer feedback are very important examples, but that’s all they are – examples.

A Reinforcing (or positive) feedback loop isn’t necessarily a good thing. In fact more often than not, it’s bad. A simple example and very relevant and familiar to us all now is how a virus spreads:

Diagram suggesting the feedback loop of a virus increasingly spreading in a population.
Diagram suggesting the feedback loop of a virus increasingly spreading in a population.

Often there are more stages in a reinforcing feedback loop. A slightly more complex one, again from nature, is here, showing how they can lead to a “vicious cycle”:

Feedback loop demonstrating the recurrent effects of warming global temperatures.
Feedback loop demonstrating the recurrent effects of warming global temperatures.

As you can see, “positive” doesn’t mean “good”! There are loads of these in nature. But they exist in behavioural systems too, human or animal. A simple example:

Feedback loop between cattle running and the level of panic within the group.
Feedback loop between cattle running and the level of panic within the group.

I think they exist a lot in our current FE system. Here are a few that have been mentioned to me by interviewees in my project:

Feedback loop showing a college being able to hire more staff for writing bids, and the college increasing in size as a result.
Feedback loop showing a college being able to hire more staff for writing bids, and the college increasing in size as a result.
Feedback loop diagram on the positive loop of an outstanding Ofsted rating and the recruitment of students who are more likely to contribute to a higher rating in future.
Feedback loop diagram on the positive loop of an outstanding Ofsted rating and the recruitment of students who are more likely to contribute to a higher rating in future.
Feedback loop discussing the relationship between a student's lack of belief in their maths ability, and the outcome of them actually struggling with maths.
Feedback loop discussing the relationship between a student’s lack of belief in their maths ability, and the outcome of them actually struggling with maths.
Feedback loop showing that when college income falls, cost cutting reduces size and/or quality of provision which in turn means that fewer students apply feeding back into a further reduction in college income
Feedback loop showing that when college income falls, cost cutting reduces size and/or quality of provision which in turn means that fewer students apply feeding back into a further reduction in college income
Feedback loop illustrating the relationship between government trust in providers and the performance of those providers.
Feedback loop illustrating the relationship between government trust in providers and the performance of those providers.

I think these are powerful examples.  Once you start looking for Reinforcing feedback loops you start to see them everywhere, including in one’s personal life (!) Remedies and responses are for a later stage of this project, so stay tuned to future blogs.

My next blog will be about Negative (or Balancing) feedback loops.

David Russell

University of Oxford, Said Business School and Education and Training Foundation logo
University of Oxford, Said Business School and Education and Training Foundation logo

Executive in Residence at Oxford Saïd Business School 
Education and Training Foundation