The language used in education shapes policy, practice, and perceptions. Edge’s series asks, What's in a Word? and scrutinises the impact of the terminology we commonly employ.
Few concepts in education are invoked as frequently as ‘feedback’, and little rivals it for its potential to transform students’ learning. However, much of what is currently labelled as ‘feedback’ does not function as feedback at all. Despite the vast majority of teachers thinking about and caring for their students, feedback is, unfortunately, frequently (mis)understood and (mis)used. Often, feedback’s primary function is for teachers to comment on students’ work and to justify a grade, with little thought for including learners in the process or their future learning.
So, what actually is feedback, and how should the term be understood to support learning? Linguistically, the verb ‘feed’ can be defined as ‘to give food to; supply with nourishment.’ This may help explain why, in educational settings, it is most commonly the teacher who ‘feeds’ the learner with information to ‘nourish’ their learning. Yet can learners not feed themselves with such nourishment? Much like the independent backpacker traveler, I argue that learners need to become independent ‘feedbackpackers.’ Adopting such a mindset gives learners autonomy to enhance their own evaluative judgement and work independently of their teachers. For example, much like the backpacker, independent feedback users must plan carefully, source and allocate resources, adapt to different cultures, use and understand different languages, and be prepared to overcome the unexpected. The second part of the term ‘back’ is perhaps even more problematic. Why does feedback assume a retrospective focus? It is therefore unsurprising that much of what students encounter consists of teacher comments on completed work, often with limited attention to future learning and development.
To improve practice, it is essential that understandings and definitions of feedback are refined. In their influential paper on student feedback literacy, leading feedback scholars David Carless and David Boud define feedback as ‘a process through which learners make sense of information from various sources and use it to enhance their work or learning strategies.’
Framing feedback this way, information on learners’ work needs to be used to convert into feedback. Fundamentally, it is the job of educators, policymakers, and curriculum/assessment designers to ensure that assessments and feedback processes are designed to foster such use to facilitate learning and improvement, a skill that requires teacher feedback literacy.
A clearer operational understanding of feedback also allows us to recognise when it has failed. Take the common scenario where a teacher has commented on their student’s work, but the student fails to use (or even read!) the comments. According to Carless and Boud’s definition, this is not actually feedback, as the assessment and feedback were not designed to ensure and track learners’ use of the comments. From my own experience of working with second language learners, feedback language is often unclear, lacking specificity, and challenging to understand and apply. Too much feedback can also be overwhelming for learners to process, prioritise and use. Interestingly, I find when grades are involved, this can often blur feedback and draw learners’ attention away from the positivity of learning and towards the negativity of grade justification and argumentation. This is why designing feedback to track learners’ use and improvement and disentangling feedback from grades is so important
Feedback often means wildly different things for practitioners (and students) both within and beyond disciplines, and who often possess different cultural values, languages, and educational backgrounds. However, what should be agreed upon is that understandings of feedback have evolved from outdated transmission-focused to current learning-focused modes. The key distinction is that feedback practices should no longer focus exclusively on teacher comments to passive learners. Instead, students should be actively involved in a dialogic feedback process that promotes learning. Unfortunately, despite a clear shift in thinking within educational feedback research, institutional feedback policy remains outdated. For example, my recent analysis of 50 UK university feedback policy texts found language describing feedback as the transmission of information from teachers to students who were mostly perceived as passive recipients.
If feedback practices are to improve and actually help students learn, then how feedback is understood, framed and discussed within educational policy needs to be more carefully considered and better articulated.
As language has the power to shape both understandings and practice, a conscious and collective effort to change the use of the term feedback is urgently needed. For example, a simple switch from ‘learners receive’ to ‘learners engage with’ instantly converts feedback from a passive snapshot to an active agentic process. To achieve this, teachers may need to unpack and realign learners’ feedback expectations formed through previous educational experiences and help develop their student feedback literacy. One concrete strategy I use is to have learners communicate what feedback they do and do not want by completing reflective feedback cover sheets. This involves learners in the feedback process, personalises their feedback, and initiates dialogue. The free and interactive Feedback emPower Tools are also an excellent resource to help enhance feedback practice. Finally, feedback policy needs to be updated to better align with current learning-focused perspectives. As the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University advocates, to address these issues, collective work is required to enhance the feedback literacy of teachers and policymakers to ensure feedback strategies make a difference.
Written by
Joseph Davies, Senior Lecturer of English Language, Duke Kunshan University. Joseph is Assistant Director for Graduate English for Academic Purposes at Duke Kunshan University where he manages the academic language programs for all graduate programs. His current research focuses on feedback, specifically second language student feedback literacy, teacher feedback literacy, feedback policy, and feedback culture within Sino-foreign higher education contexts.
Next time: What’s in a Word takes a break for the summer. If you have suggestions for contested words and concepts in education policy you’d like to see tackled in the future, please get in touch with series editor Josh Patel.