Feedback That Develops Rather Than Directs
Feedback is not simply an opinion about how well a student performed. Once spoken by a teacher, it becomes part of what the student may attend to, repeat, avoid or attempt to change in future work. Useful feedback therefore requires more than accuracy. It must identify the part of the student’s work that actually deserves attention, distinguish a specific decision from the entire exercise, and offer enough clarity to support learning without scripting what the next communication should look like. This chapter examines feedback as a precise educational intervention: what it should address, how much should be given, how praise and correction shape learning, and how effective feedback gradually helps students examine their own work with greater resolution.
Book Seven — Teaching, Service & the Philosophy of Mediumship
A Common Question
If I can see several things a student could improve, shouldn’t I explain all of them so they know what to work on?
Answer
Not necessarily. A teacher may notice far more than a student can use productively in one moment. Effective feedback identifies the issue that most affected the work, explains it specifically enough to be understood, and helps the student see the principle beneath the correction. Giving every observation at once can overwhelm learning, while vague praise or criticism teaches little. The aim is not to tell the student exactly what to do next, but to help them understand the decision they made well enough that they can apply the underlying principle when an entirely different situation arises.
Introduction — Feedback Should Illuminate, Not Script
Once an exercise is complete, the teacher has a choice.
They can tell the student what they should have done.
Or they can help the student understand what they actually did.
Those responses may sound similar.
Educationally, they can lead in very different directions.
Suppose a student begins with clear information about a house.
They describe a narrow hallway, a staircase immediately inside the entrance and stained glass beside the front door.
The recipient confirms all three.
The student then decides the communicator must have built the house.
Nothing established that.
The recipient says no.
The student becomes uncertain and abandons the entire line.
A teacher could respond:
“Next time, stay with the building longer. Ask for occupation. Then ask who lived there. Don’t move on until you know why you’re seeing it.”
The advice sounds useful.
It gives the student a plan.
But it may teach the wrong lesson.
The original problem was not that the student failed to ask enough questions.
It was that they moved from an accurate description of a place to an unsupported conclusion about what the communicator did.
The teacher’s proposed solution has now introduced a new procedure without making the original decision visible.
A different response would be:
“The house itself was clear and confirmed. The difficulty began when you changed from describing the building to deciding that the communicator built it. Nothing in the original information had established occupation.”
Now the student can locate the exact transition.
The issue was not the house.
Not perception.
Not recipient response.
Not lack of connection.
It was one interpretive move.
This is what useful feedback should do.
“Good feedback makes the student’s own work more visible to them. Directive feedback can make the teacher’s solution more visible instead.”
That distinction matters because teachers often possess solutions quickly.
Experience allows them to imagine several better ways the student could have handled the situation.
But the teacher’s preferred solution is not always the most important educational information.
If the student does not understand why the original decision caused difficulty, giving them a replacement sequence may only teach substitution.
They stop doing one thing because the teacher told them to do another.
The underlying judgement may remain unchanged.
Then a different situation arises and the old weakness appears again in a new form.
Feedback becomes more valuable when it reveals structure.
What was sound?
Where did the work change?
What decision introduced the problem?
What did the student know at that moment?
What did they assume?
What happened after the assumption?
These questions turn a sitting into material for learning.
This is different from replaying every detail.
The teacher does not need to reconstruct the entire exercise minute by minute.
They need to identify the moment that matters.
Sometimes the most important feedback concerns a mistake.
Sometimes it concerns a good decision the student barely noticed.
A student receives a partial name:
“Mar—”
They resist completing it.
The recipient eventually identifies Martin.
The student may think the successful outcome is the important part.
The teacher might instead say:
“The strongest decision there was not that Martin was eventually confirmed. It was that you did not turn ‘Mar’ into a full name before you had one.”
Now the student sees what deserves repeating.
The teacher has shifted attention from outcome to judgement.
That is significant because students can become obsessed with whether something was right.
Feedback can teach them to ask a better question:
What did I do with what I had?
A correct result can arise from poor handling.
A wrong result can sometimes contain a sound perceptual beginning followed by one bad interpretation.
If feedback addresses only final outcome, the student misses those distinctions.
This is why feedback should clarify what happened without prewriting what must happen next.
The next communication may contain no house.
No name.
No uncertain recipient.
No familiar symbol.
A scripted correction may therefore be useless.
A principle can travel.
If the student understands:
“I need to preserve the distinction between what is present and what I have concluded from it,”
that lesson remains available regardless of the material.
The teacher’s role is therefore not to design the student’s next communication in advance.
It is to help the student see the decision-making structure of the one that just occurred.
That is where development begins.
What Exactly Are You Giving Feedback On?
Teachers often speak about an exercise as though it were one thing.
“That was excellent.”
“That was weak.”
“You were very strong.”
“You lost it.”
But a mediumistic exercise contains several different components.
They should not automatically receive one verdict.
A student may perceive accurately and interpret poorly.
They may have strong evidence but confusing delivery.
They may communicate clearly while relying too heavily on recipient information.
They may have very little material but make excellent decisions about the little they do have.
They may struggle with placement while remaining precise about everything else.
What, exactly, is the teacher evaluating?
This question sounds obvious.
In practice, it is frequently overlooked.
Consider a student who gives the following:
A man associated with woodworking.
A damaged index finger.
A workshop behind the house.
A habit of leaving pencils behind his ear.
All are confirmed.
The student then says:
“He must have built furniture professionally.”
The recipient says no. He repaired musical instruments as a hobby.
A teacher says:
“That was a really good communication except for the occupation.”
That is not wrong.
But it still blends several different things.
The teacher could be more useful:
“Your perception was highly specific. The workshop, hand injury and pencils were all strong. The problem was not the material. You took several details connected with making things and converted them into a profession.”
Now the student knows what failed.
The difference is important.
If the student hears only:
“The occupation was wrong,”
they may become cautious about occupational information.
But occupation was never received.
It was constructed.
The correction should target the construction, not the subject category.
“Useful feedback identifies the decision that affected the work, rather than turning the whole exercise into a verdict.”
This applies equally to praise.
Students need to know what they did well.
But praise is often surprisingly imprecise.
“Brilliant.”
“Excellent.”
“Very strong.”
“You really connected today.”
Such comments may encourage.
They do not necessarily educate.
Imagine a student who usually changes information after recipient hesitation.
During one exercise they do something different.
They say:
“I have a woman connected with accounting.”
The recipient hesitates.
The student remains with it.
“I’m going to leave accounting exactly as I have it because it remains clear.”
The recipient then realizes the communicator kept the accounts for a family business although it was not her formal occupation.
The teacher could say:
“That was excellent.”
Or:
“When the recipient hesitated, you did not widen or replace what you had. You allowed the original information to remain intact.
That was the important decision.”
The second response gives the student something usable.
“If praise cannot tell the student what deserves repeating, it may reward the person more than it develops the work.”
This does not mean every positive comment needs a technical lecture.
Teachers can simply say:
“Good.”
“Very clear.”
“Well handled.”
Human encouragement matters.
But when praise is intended to teach, specificity gives it value.
The same principle applies to criticism.
“You need more discipline.”
What does that mean?
“You are too much in your head.”
What behavior supports that conclusion?
“You need to trust Spirit.”
What should change?
General language forces the student to invent their own explanation.
They may solve the wrong problem.
A student told to “trust more” may start speaking sooner.
But perhaps they were already speaking too quickly.
Another may stop questioning interpretation because they think questioning indicates lack of trust.
Feedback that sounds spiritually encouraging can produce technical confusion.
Specificity protects against this.
“You received the surname correctly, but after the recipient hesitated you offered three alternative surnames. The issue is not that you need more trust in general. It is that recipient uncertainty caused you to abandon information that had originally been clear.”
Now the student understands where confidence actually changed.
Feedback can also distinguish quality from difficulty.
A difficult exercise may still contain good decisions.
Suppose almost nothing develops.
The student waits.
Gives two modest pieces.
Neither is confirmed.
They do not guess.
Do not interrogate the recipient.
Do not invent a message.
Eventually they stop.
The exercise has not produced strong evidence.
But the student may have demonstrated excellent restraint.
A teacher who says:
“That didn’t go well,”
misses the educational value.
A more exact assessment is:
“The communication never became sufficiently established, but your handling of that difficulty was sound. You did not manufacture continuation.”
The student learns that quality of judgement matters even when outcome is limited.
The reverse also occurs.
A student gives several impressive pieces but does so through poor process.
They repeatedly ask suggestive questions.
The recipient supplies context.
The student builds on those answers.
The final communication sounds strong.
A teacher dazzled by the outcome may overlook how much information entered from the recipient.
This is why feedback cannot be reduced to whether the sitting felt successful.
The teacher should be able to separate:
what was perceived;
what was interpreted;
what was supplied;
how the student responded;
and what decisions affected the final result.
Not every exercise requires formal analysis across all of those areas.
But the teacher should know which one they are talking about.
Otherwise feedback becomes emotionally clear but educationally vague.
The student leaves knowing the teacher liked or disliked the work.
They do not necessarily know why.
Feedback That Looks Back Without Scripting Forward
A correction often contains two possible directions.
One looks backward:
What happened here?
The other looks forward:
What should you do next time?
Both can be useful.
The problem begins when forward instruction arrives before the student understands the previous event.
Suppose a student sees a uniform.
They say:
“He was military.”
The recipient says no.
The teacher knows the uniform may have had many possible contexts.
A directive response would be:
“Next time you see a uniform, ask whether it is military, medical, transport or ceremonial before you say anything.”
That gives the student options.
But it can create another problem.
The next time a uniform appears, those four categories may immediately enter the student’s thinking.
The teacher has replaced one automatic interpretation with a list of automatic possibilities.
A developmental response might be:
“You had the uniform. Military was your interpretation. The next time something appears clearly but its function does not, keep the description separate until context gives you more.”
The student has not been told what the next uniform should mean.
They have been given a principle.
“A correction becomes developmental when the student can carry its principle into a situation the teacher never predicted.”
That is one of the best tests of feedback.
If the lesson works only when the same symbol appears again, it is narrow.
If it teaches a distinction that applies to buildings, clothing, names, relationships and bodily impressions, it travels.
Sometimes the teacher can help the student discover the distinction rather than stating it immediately.
A student gives:
“I see a large silver key.”
Then:
“This must mean he finally found freedom near the end of his life.”
The recipient cannot relate.
After the exercise, the teacher asks:
“What was the last thing you were certain of?”
“The silver key.”
“Did freedom arrive with it?”
The student pauses.
“No. I decided that.”
“What made you decide it?”
“I associate keys with freedom.”
Now the correction has become visible through the student’s own reconstruction.
The teacher does not need to say much more.
The student has identified the exact point where personal association entered.
“The purpose of feedback is not to save the student from having to think about their work.”
This is important because excellent teachers are often very good at explaining.
That can become a disadvantage if every difficulty receives an immediate, complete interpretation.
The student listens.
Understands.
Agrees.
Then repeats the same pattern three weeks later.
Why?
Because comprehension of the teacher’s explanation is not the same as being able to identify the pattern from within one’s own work.
Sometimes the student needs to perform part of the analysis.
What were you certain of?
When did certainty change?
What did the recipient contribute?
Why did you change the statement?
What did you think the image meant before the recipient answered?
Which part was perception?
Which part was your explanation?
These questions are not tests designed to catch mistakes.
They return ownership of the analysis to the student.
Direct feedback still has a legitimate place.
A teacher should not turn every correction into a Socratic puzzle.
Sometimes the student genuinely does not see the issue.
Then clarity is kinder.
“You asked a leading question there. You supplied the relationship before the recipient did.”
Or:
“You changed the original statement after the no. That weakened the evidential value.”
The teacher can state the problem directly.
The distinction is whether the direct correction gives the student understanding or merely instruction.
This becomes particularly important when teachers suggest what the student should receive.
“Ask Spirit for a name.”
“Get a memory now.”
“Go back and find the cause of death.”
“Ask who the second communicator is.”
Those prompts can be useful within specific training exercises designed around particular skills.
But used casually, they can teach students to expect mediumship to respond to a checklist.
The student begins managing the content.
They may feel unsuccessful when the requested category does not appear.
A teacher should be clear about the educational purpose when deliberately directing an exercise.
“We are practicing names today, so I want you to stay with phonetic material when it becomes available.”
That is transparent.
It differs from implying that every live communication should produce the categories the teacher requests.
Feedback should not accidentally teach the student that Spirit relationship is a vending machine for evidential categories.
There is also a difference between suggesting a technique and prescribing an experience.
The teacher may say:
“When you notice yourself rushing to interpret, pause and describe the original image again.”
That is a human technique.
It does not tell the student what Spirit should provide.
The student retains freedom to work with whatever appears.
This distinction keeps feedback grounded in what the practitioner can actually control.
Attention.
Language.
Timing.
Questions.
Interpretation.
Selection.
The teacher should be cautious about instructing the student to control what Spirit supplies.
The student can improve their handling.
They cannot command the content of relationship into a predetermined curriculum sequence.
Good feedback therefore looks backward carefully enough that the next step does not need to be scripted in detail.
The student understands the principle.
When a new circumstance arrives, they have something to think with.
Precision, Proportion and the Emotional Temperature of Feedback
A teacher may notice ten things during a six-minute exercise.
The student may need one.
This is one of the most difficult disciplines in teaching.
Expertise increases perception of error.
The experienced teacher hears every unnecessary question.
Every interpretive leap.
Every shift after recipient feedback.
Every missed opportunity.
Every good decision.
Every moment where wording could have been cleaner.
Seeing all of that can create pressure to say all of it.
But the teacher’s ability to see more does not mean the student needs to hear more.
Feedback requires selection.
Suppose the teacher notices:
the student began with excellent evidence;
asked one leading question;
repeated two confirmed details unnecessarily;
interpreted one image too early;
handled a recipient’s no very well;
lost clarity near the end;
and closed appropriately.
Seven observations.
Which one matters?
Perhaps the premature interpretation is a recurring issue and caused most of the subsequent difficulty.
Then that should probably receive primary attention.
The student may also be told:
“You handled the rejection well.”
Two pieces of feedback may teach more than seven.
This is proportion.
The teacher asks:
What most affected the work?
Is this a repeated pattern or a one-off event?
Which issue, if better understood, could improve several others?
What is the student currently capable of integrating?
What can wait?
The last question matters.
Not every correct observation needs immediate correction.
A teacher may deliberately leave a minor issue untouched because something more fundamental deserves attention first.
That is not neglect.
It is sequencing.
A student who cannot yet distinguish perception from interpretation does not benefit from an extensive critique of sophisticated platform pacing.
Address the structural vulnerability first.
Feedback also has emotional temperature.
This does not mean making every correction gentle.
It means understanding that tone can change what the student hears.
There is a difference between:
“You keep ruining your evidence by interpreting.”
and:
“You interpreted beyond the evidence three times in that exercise.”
The second may be more direct.
It is also more accurate.
The first describes the person as someone who ruins evidence.
The second describes behavior that occurred three times.
Behavior can be changed.
Identity statements can become internal labels.
The teacher should therefore be cautious with:
“You are…”
“You’re careless.”
“You’re too controlling.”
“You’re insecure.”
“You’re naturally weak at this.”
These statements can transform temporary or situational patterns into personal definitions.
Feedback is usually stronger when attached to observable action.
“You changed your answer every time the recipient hesitated.”
“You supplied the meaning before describing the image.”
“You asked four questions that contained information the recipient had not yet given.”
Specificity is demanding.
It does not need harshness.
“Compassion can change how feedback is delivered. It should not change what the teacher has actually observed.”
A student may be disappointed.
They may have thought the exercise went well.
The teacher should not therefore pretend that unsupported statements were evidential.
That would protect emotion at the expense of learning.
But the teacher can present the distinction without humiliation.
“There was good material here. There was also a recurring problem with how you used the recipient’s responses. Let’s separate those rather than calling the whole exercise good or bad.”
Truthfulness can increase confidence when it is precise.
The student sees that one weakness does not erase everything else.
Likewise, strength in one area does not erase the weakness.
The work becomes differentiated.
There is also a danger in excessive cushioning.
Some teachers fear discouraging students and surround every correction with so much praise that the point disappears.
“That was really lovely, and you had some wonderful things, and maybe at some point you could possibly consider whether you were slightly interpreting…”
The student hears:
“That went well.”
The teacher thinks they delivered correction.
Nothing changes.
Kindness should not make feedback unintelligible.
A student who has repeatedly added information deserves to know that it is a real issue.
Clear language can be respectful:
“This is now a pattern. Your initial perceptions are often accurate, but you are adding meaning before enough context exists. We need to work specifically on that.”
There is no insult.
There is also no ambiguity.
Praise requires similar calibration.
If every ordinary competent decision receives:
“Amazing.”
“Incredible.”
“Phenomenal.”
the language loses educational meaning.
Students may begin associating quality with emotional enthusiasm rather than with standards.
A clean, responsible decision can simply be:
“Good. You handled that correctly.”
Not every successful moment needs elevation.
Realistic praise helps students calibrate.
This becomes especially important in group teaching.
Students hear the feedback given to others.
If one student repeatedly receives extravagant praise for highly visual material, everyone learns what appears valued.
If another is praised specifically for leaving something unresolved, students learn that disciplined restraint also matters.
Feedback creates culture.
The teacher is therefore educating more people than the individual currently receiving the comment.
The emotional temperature of correction also affects whether students become defensive.
Defensiveness cannot always be prevented.
People care about their work.
But feedback that is specific, proportionate and attached to behavior gives the student less need to defend their whole identity.
The teacher is not saying:
“You are not good enough.”
They are saying:
“This is where the work changed.”
That is something teacher and student can examine together.
The Spirit Wisdom Academy Perspective — Feedback Should Increase the Student’s Own Resolution
Within the Spirit Wisdom Academy, feedback is successful when the student becomes capable of seeing more of their own work.
At first, a student may describe an exercise globally.
“That was terrible.”
“I thought it was amazing.”
“I completely lost it.”
“I was really connected.”
These statements describe an overall impression.
They do not yet reveal much.
After useful feedback, the student may be able to say:
“My perception remained clear, but I started changing interpretations after the recipient rejected the first one.”
Or:
“The evidence was strong, but I allowed the recipient to give too much explanatory information and then built upon it.”
Or:
“I thought the sitting was weak because two pieces were rejected, but reviewing it showed that my handling was actually disciplined. I simply did not have enough to continue.”
The student is now seeing at greater resolution.
This is a useful way to understand the purpose of feedback.
The teacher is not merely supplying a better opinion.
They are helping the student develop finer distinctions.
“The best feedback does not leave the student thinking more about the teacher’s opinion. It leaves them seeing more clearly what happened in their own work.”
That distinction protects students from becoming approval-dependent.
A student who relies heavily on teacher reaction may ask after every exercise:
“Was that good?”
The question makes sense early in learning.
They do not yet possess enough reference to evaluate everything independently.
The teacher should answer.
But the educational direction should gradually change.
Instead of only:
“Yes, that was good,”
the teacher may ask:
“What do you think was strongest?”
The student replies:
“The name.”
“Why?”
“Because I gave it before the recipient said anything and I kept it partial until more formed.”
Now the student has participated in the assessment.
Later, the teacher may ask:
“Where do you think the communication became weaker?”
The student identifies the moment accurately.
Eventually the student may finish an exercise and say:
“I know where I changed it. The image was clear, but I gave the meaning too quickly.”
The teacher may have almost nothing to add.
That is not the teacher becoming unnecessary in a negative sense.
It is evidence that the student has internalized a distinction.
“Feedback has succeeded when the student can eventually make the distinction before the teacher has to point it out.”
This progression should not be forced.
Teachers should not withhold help merely to make students independent.
A student who does not understand an issue needs explanation.
But explanation should gradually produce greater capacity for self-observation.
The teacher initially sees what the student cannot see.
Then the student begins seeing it after prompting.
Later they see it independently.
Eventually they may identify it while the work is occurring and adjust appropriately without external intervention.
That is development.
Feedback can also increase resolution by separating success from identity.
A student gives excellent evidence.
The teacher does not need to tell them:
“You are becoming an exceptional medium.”
The stronger educational response may be:
“You stayed very close to what was actually available today. Notice how little reinterpretation was necessary because you allowed the evidence to establish itself first.”
The student learns about the work rather than receiving a status.
The same applies to difficulty.
“You are not progressing”
is a global judgement.
“Your perception has become more precise, but your interpretation is still outrunning it”
shows a profile.
The second gives the student somewhere to go.
This is why feedback should remain proportionate to what one exercise can establish.
One strong sitting does not define the student.
One poor exercise does not define them either.
Patterns matter.
Teachers should resist making large statements from small samples.
A student who struggles once with recipient placement does not suddenly “have a placement problem.”
A student who gives one excellent public communication is not automatically ready for regular platform work.
Feedback should describe the scale of evidence available.
That models the same precision expected in mediumship itself.
There is another important responsibility.
Teachers should be willing to ask whether their feedback actually worked.
They may give an explanation that seems brilliant.
The student nods.
Nothing changes.
Perhaps the student did not understand.
Perhaps the feedback targeted the wrong problem.
Perhaps too much was given.
Perhaps the teacher’s explanation made sense intellectually but did not translate into a usable distinction.
Feedback itself can be reviewed.
What changed afterward?
Did the student become more precise?
More self-conscious?
Did they start reproducing the teacher’s language without improving the underlying decision?
Did a correction create rigidity?
Did praise cause them to chase one kind of result?
Teachers should not assume that because feedback was accurate, it was educationally effective.
Impact matters.
This does not make the teacher responsible for every student response.
The student retains agency.
But teachers should remain interested in what their interventions actually produce.
Feedback is part of teaching, and teaching should remain capable of learning from its own consequences.
This is especially important because teachers can become attached to particular corrections.
They say the same phrase to many students:
“Trust the first thing.”
“Stop thinking.”
“Don’t doubt.”
“Go with it.”
Perhaps those phrases help some people.
For others they may intensify exactly the wrong habit.
A student who already delivers too quickly does not need more encouragement to trust immediacy.
A student who constructs interpretations does not need to stop thinking; they need to distinguish thought used for responsible interpretation from thought used to manufacture completion.
Feedback becomes stronger when it is specific to the actual decision.
The Academy therefore treats feedback as an instrument of increasing resolution.
It should help the student distinguish:
perception from interpretation;
a strong decision from a successful outcome;
a weak moment from an entire sitting;
uncertainty from failure;
correction from personal judgement;
and a teacher’s perspective from the student’s own developing capacity to evaluate the work.
The ultimate aim is not for the student to hear the teacher’s voice internally forever.
It is for the relevant principle to become understood well enough that the student no longer needs the sentence that first taught it.
That is where feedback begins approaching the territory of the next chapter.
Correction is necessary.
Teachers will sometimes have to intervene clearly and repeatedly.
But correction can create another educational risk when the student begins relying on the teacher to identify every weakness, confirm every improvement and decide every next step.
The issue then is no longer whether the feedback was accurate.
It is whether the teaching relationship is producing dependence.
The central principle of this chapter is:
“Feedback should make the student’s own work more visible rather than replacing it with the teacher’s solution. Useful feedback identifies the specific decision that affected the work, gives only as much correction as can be meaningfully used, and helps the student understand a principle that can travel beyond the original exercise. Its success is ultimately shown when the student begins seeing the distinction for themselves.”
Continue Your Journey
Feedback becomes most valuable when it strengthens the student’s capacity to examine their own work.
But the more knowledgeable a teacher becomes, the easier it is for students to rely on that knowledge.
The teacher may see problems faster.
Offer better explanations.
Know which exercise should come next.
The student may therefore begin looking toward the teacher whenever uncertainty appears.
What begins as appropriate guidance can gradually become dependence if the educational relationship does not continue changing as the student becomes more capable.
The next chapter examines how correction can remain clear and useful without making the teacher the permanent authority through whom the student must understand their own mediumship.
Completing This Chapter
You have now examined feedback as something more precise than praise, criticism or advice.
Useful feedback identifies what part of the work is actually being evaluated.
It distinguishes a particular decision from the entire exercise and allows both strengths and weaknesses to be described without turning either into a judgement about the student as a person.
You have also established that feedback should illuminate previous decisions without scripting the content of future communication.
A principle can travel into situations the teacher never predicted.
A procedural answer often cannot.
Teachers therefore need to choose not only what feedback is correct, but what feedback is useful now.
More observation does not automatically require more correction.
Truthfulness does not require harshness.
Compassion does not require vagueness.
And praise becomes more educational when students understand what they did that deserves repeating.
The purpose of feedback is not to leave the student with more of the teacher’s opinion.
It is to leave them able to see more of their own work.
Continue to Chapter Six: Correction Without Creating Dependence
The next chapter examines what happens when helpful teaching begins doing work the student increasingly needs to learn to do for themselves. It explores how repeated rescue can prevent judgement from developing, how capable students can begin outsourcing decisions to the teacher, and how responsibility can be transferred gradually without withdrawing support. It also considers the difference between needing guidance and depending upon another person to resolve every uncertainty, and why mature teaching should increasingly support the student’s capacity for self-correction.