Implications for Student Feedback
Student feedback is currently at the fore-front of higher education discourse, with students apparently less satisfied with feedback than with most other aspects of the student learning experience (Evans, 2013). In this chapter I will not attempt to revie
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IMPLICATIONS FOR STUDENT FEEDBACK Changing the Game
INTRODUCTION
Student feedback is currently at the fore-front of higher education discourse, with students apparently less satisfied with feedback than with most other aspects of the student learning experience (Evans, 2013). In this chapter I will not attempt to review the extensive literature on this topic, but only to consider key aspects that relate to the knowledge structures approach that is the focus of this book. In this context feedback is seen as a vital link between the theory that supports teaching (Chapter 6) and the focus of development of academics in dialogue with their students (Chapter 8). Many authors writing in the specialist feedback literature, as well as those appearing in the disciplinary literature, are keen to emphasise the importance of feedback and to provide tips on enhancing processes of feedback delivery (e.g. Clynes & Rafferty, 2008; Koh, 2008, 2010). These studies consider various attributes of feedback that may contribute to its effectiveness (timing, frequency, positive/negative voice etc.). However, they do not consider the relationship between the structure of the feedback given and its context-dependency with the knowledge structure of the discipline upon which the feedback is focussed – particularly in terms of semantic gravity (Maton, 2009). This chapter considers feedback in a way that may help to integrate the process of feedback into the curriculum, to increase its effectiveness by aligning feedback initiatives to a knowledge-structures perspective of teaching and learning. STUDENT CONCEPTIONS OF FEEDBACK
The literature on assessment and feedback appears in many ways to be separate from the literature on teaching. For example, the analysis of feedback effectiveness does not seem to acknowledge the environmental range in which feedback may be delivered. So students faced with a teacher who demonstrates a ‘knowledge transmission’ conception of teaching, in which the emphasis is on imparting information, may benefit from a different mode of feedback from those students faced with a teacher who adopts a ‘learning facilitation’ conception of teaching where the emphasis may be on knowledge creation. Considering feedback theoretically, in the absence of contextual factors, would seem to have limited potential utility for the student. In complex learning environments students do not always recognise feedback when it is offered. In the minds of many students feedback is synonymous with 103
CHAPTER 7
written feedback on formal assessments rather than anything else. Informal and verbal feedback if often lost in the noise of the classroom. McLean et al. (2015) have focussed on students’ conceptions of feedback and the ways in which these views overlap with student and teacher conceptions of teaching. These authors have identified four qualitatively different experiences of feedback: 1. Feedback as telling, in which the uni-directional transmission of ‘correct’ answers puts emphasis on a single, expert voice. This view of feedbac
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