Integrating the development of student and staff feedback literacy

Abstract

Feedback is potentially one of the most powerful ways of advancing student learning, but there is plenty of evidence that students and staff are not particularly satisfied with current feedback practices. Students generally find it difficult to use feedback for ongoing improvement; and teachers often perceive that feedback is time-consuming and unrewarding. One of the barriers to the improvement of feedback processes is limited appreciation among students and teachers about what exactly effective feedback involves and how uptake can be facilitated. In this presentation, I take the position that the coordinated development of student and staff feedback literacy is an essential condition for productive feedback processes. I set out what feedback literacy is; how it can be developed; and why it is sorely needed. I discuss a number of related pedagogical implications for assessment and feedback designs, and programwide approaches. I address facilitating and inhibiting factors for the development of student and staff feedback literacy and set out some future directions.