Unpacking the feedback process: an analysis of undergraduate students’ interactional meaning-making of feedback comments

ABSTRACT In light of a growing emphasis on student-centred learning approaches, feedback is viewed as an activity that has potential to facilitate higher education students’ explorations of knowledge contents and practices. However, research shows that feedback does not always lead to the expected student engagement. This qualitative study proposes a feedback conceptualization informed by sociocultural notions, in which students co-construct meaning from the teacher’s feedback comments through interaction over time, with each other, the teacher, and relevant resources. Based on an in-depth analysis of undergraduate biology students’ discussions of feedback comments, we found that the feedback process takes the form of a meaning-making trajectory students move along by orienting towards and elaborating on both task-specific and general-knowledge content. Thereby, we contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes feedback processes viewed from an interactional perspective and generate knowledge on how to tailor our feedback practices to better address the students’ needs.

[1]  Michael Young,et al.  EXTENDED REVIEW , 2007 .

[2]  C. Evans.  Making Sense of Assessment Feedback in Higher Education , 2013 .

[3]  Roger Säljö.  Learning and technologies, people and tools in co-ordinated activities , 2004 .

[4]  Karen Handley,et al.  Feedback: focusing attention on engagement , 2011 .

[5]  G. Jansson.  Recontextualisation processes as sense‐making practice in student‐writers’ collaborative dialogue , 2006 .

[6]  David Boud,et al.  Researching feedback dialogue: an interactional analysis approach , 2017 .

[7]  David Boud,et al.  Feedback in Higher and Professional Education : Understanding it and doing it well , 2013 .

[8]  Naomi Winstone,et al.  ‘It'd be useful, but I wouldn't use it’: barriers to university students’ feedback seeking and recipience , 2017 .

[9]  Sten R. Ludvigsen,et al.  Intersecting trajectories of participation: Temporality and learning , 2010 .

[10]  Per Linell.  Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically : Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making , 2009 .

[11]  L. Monrouxe,et al.  Feedback in action within bedside teaching encounters: a video ethnographic study , 2014, Medical education.

[12]  J. Roschelle.  Learning by Collaborating: Convergent Conceptual Change , 1992 .

[13]  S. Vehviläinen.  Problems in the Research Problem: Critical Feedback and Resistance in Academic Supervision , 2009 .

[14]  Sten R. Ludvigsen,et al.  Learning through interaction and co-construction of knowledge objects in teacher education , 2016 .

[15]  Felicity Small,et al.  Undergraduate student responses to feedback: expectations and experiences , 2016 .

[16]  S. Ludvigsen,et al.  Learning Across Sites : New Tools, Infrastructures and Practices , 2010 .

[17]  D. Hounsell,et al.  The quality of guidance and feedback to students , 2008 .

[18]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[19]  D. Carless,et al.  Developing sustainable feedback practices , 2011 .

[20]  Alasdair Blair,et al.  Feedback-dialogues: exploring the student perspective , 2012 .

[21]  H. Nicholson,et al.  An anatomy of feedback: a phenomenographic investigation of undergraduate students' conceptions of feedback , 2015 .

[22]  F. Marton,et al.  Learning and Awareness , 1997 .

[24]  I. Vardi.  The impact of iterative writing and feedback on the characteristics of tertiary students' written texts , 2012 .

[25]  D. Whitelock,et al.  Meaning making as an interactional accomplishment: A temporal analysis of intentionality and improvisation in classroom dialogue , 2014 .

[26]  A. McLean.  An Anatomy of Feedback - A phenomenographic investigation into undergraduate students' experiences of feedback , 2012 .