Beyond feedback: developing student capability in complex appraisal

Abstract

Giving students detailed feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of their work, with suggestions for improvement, is becoming common practice in higher education. However, for many students feedback seems to have little or no impact, despite the considerable time and effort put into its production. With a view to increasing its effectiveness, extensive theoretical and empirical research has been carried out into its structure, timing and other parameters. For students to be able to apply feedback, they need to understand the meaning of the feedback statements. They also need to identify, with near certainty, the particular aspects of their work that need attention. For these to occur, students must possess critical background knowledge. This article sets out the nature of that knowledge and how students can acquire it. They must appropriate for themselves three fundamental concepts-task compliance, quality, and criteria-and also develop a cache of relevant tacit knowledge. [150]

Twist and Shape: Feedback Practices within Creative Subject Content of Hairdressing Education

“…The results show how feedback requires situated use of the body and the material environment as a way of visibly displaying one's orientation and understanding. These aspects are largely overlooked in much of the transmissive understanding of feedback, criticized as mere Btelling^ (Sadler 2010(Sadler , 2013 or Bproduct^ , in which the teacher is seen as giving the student verbal information. This study provides evidence of how feedback practices are produced in multimodal interaction, showing how the student and teacher continually attend to each other and display their understanding of the assessable in the feedback with their bodies and tools, as well as the material object under production.…”

“…The education entails both relying on existing knowledge as well as being innovative to create something new. There is a fine line between teachers' 'tacit' expert knowing and 'the telling' in instructing (Sadler 2010). For the student, learning how to evaluate a product in progress is part of becoming a professional, with actions of planning and performing involving aesthetic as well as material properties.…”

Actual and preferred teacher feedback on student blog writing

“…Simpson (2013) delineated its importance in modern higher education as formative assessment to enhance online learning: "Feedback drives learning" (p. 55). Paradoxically, Sadler (2010) argued that "the mere provision of feedback does not lead to improvement" (p. 536). Consequently, the complexity of feedback practice is obvious.…”

“…In an environment requiring students to demonstrate cognitive skills or professional proficiency, Sadler (2010) connected feedback provisions and receptivity: "teachers who are committed to providing high-quality feedback want it to work for their students. Complementary attention should therefore be directed to what students make of the feedback" (p. 539).…”

“…Facing the changes of instructional contexts and media, teacher intervention, specifically feedback, would evolve in response to new learning channels. However, published studies focusing on feedback in digitized higher education are few by comparison with those in other sectors of education (Sadler, 2010); hence, the current research examines this issue with a blog-mediated English (as a foreign language, L2 ) writing project between two colleges in Taiwan.…”