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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: FEEDBACK
Any influence on a system that results from its own activity. Feedback is both an effect of a system’s past activity and a influence on its future activity—an output and an input.
Complex systems’ non-linear, dynamic structures include (or more accurately, embody) many feedback loops through which their previous actions are “fed back” to them. This circular causal process allows complex systems to change their structure (including the strength of these feedback loops) through their own activity. Positive feedback amplifies itself by strengthening the processes that gave rise to it. Negative feedback weakens the processes that gave rise to it and usually provides a balancing, or stabilizing, effect on systems.
Education settings are rich in feedback mechanisms. For example, classes include feedback in the form of dialogue, discussions and presentations, which in turn shape the classroom’s future activities. In addition, classrooms are implicated or nested within larger and smaller feedback processes at the cultural and biological levels.
See related terms: Dynamic Structure, Classroom, Recursion.
