Feelings about feedback: who cares about what?

Black, E. and Makara Fuller, K. (2022) Feelings about feedback: who cares about what? Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, (Accepted for Publication)

Abstract

What do learners and teachers care about most when it comes to assessment and feedback? If feedback is a dialogue (Nicol, 2010), are we talking at cross-purposes? This short article describes findings from the initial stage of a small-scale research-project exploring practical solutions to enduring concerns around assessment and feedback in the School of Education at a large research-intensive university. Anecdotal evidence from teachers within this School indicates feelings that assessment and feedback is something to which they devote large amounts of time, often beyond that allocated in workload calculations. Despite these efforts, however, findings from the UK National Student Survey and similar large-scale, anonymised datasets show that students are persistently less than satisfied with assessment and feedback processes; an experience typical of higher education more generally (Nicol, 2010; Carless & Boud, 2018). Data from our focus groups with students and interviews with teachers supports insights into the understandings and priorities of these different groups of feedback ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’ (Winstone, Nash, Parker & Rowntree, 2017). Taking a psychological perspective on assessment and feedback, we identify this as a strongly emotive aspect of learning and teaching, generating several suggested areas for development of practice and challenging questions for future phases of our research.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Assessment, feedback, emotions, responses, dialogue.
• Status: Accepted for Publication
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Makara Fuller, Dr Kara and Black, Ms Elizabeth
• Authors: Black, E., and Makara Fuller, K.
• Subjects: L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education; College of Social Sciences > School of Education > People, Place & Social Change
• Journal Name: Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
• Journal Abbr.: PESTLHE
• Publisher: University of Glasgow
• ISSN: 1750-8428
• ISSN (Online): 1750-8428