Enhancing feedback literacy in the workplace: A learner-centred approach

This chapter discusses the development, implementation and evaluation of a learning intervention to enhance students’ workplace feedback literacy. Healthcare students want more feedback during placements. Students’ roles in feedback processes tend to be overlooked with most learning interventions focusing on professional development of educators, that is, how to ‘deliver’ feedback better (Carless et al., 2011). Addressing student’s role in feedback, as seeker, processer and user of performance information, offers an opportunity to improve placement and post-placement feedback experiences. The intervention aimed to augment students’ feedback literacy and their engagement during and after clinical placements at a teaching hospital. Informed by the learner-centred feedback model, Feedback Mark 2 (Boud D, Molloy E, Feedback in higher and professional education: understanding it and doing it well. Routledge, New York, 2013a, Boud D, Molloy E, Assess Eval High Educ, 38(6), 698–712. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2012.691462, 2013b), the multifaceted intervention, which included an online primer, workshop and reflective activities, aimed to (1) support students’ self-evaluation of placement performance, (2) encourage students to seek and receive feedback from clinical supervisors and peers to compare internally and externally derived feedback and (3) use these comparisons to generate a plan for improved work. The intervention, performed 3 times with 105 students, was evaluated using 2 surveys and one-off interviews (n = 28). Students were highly satisfied with their intervention experiences and reported an enhanced understanding of the features of, and their role in, feedback processes. Moreover, students described being more actively engaged in placement feedback processes. They attributed these changes to feeling more empowered to ask for feedback to improve their performance. These findings suggest enhancing placement learning through student engagement in feedback needs to begin before placement, be enacted during placement and be consolidated following placement. This vertical reinforcement may occur through activities, which support feedback as a learning mechanism. Central to effective feedback engagement is planning for subsequent learning; thus, placement experiences and active feedback engagement will support students post-placement to plan and integrate further university-based learnings

Identifying Feedback That Has Impact

This chapter offers new insight regarding the theoretical, methodological and practical concerns relating to feedback in higher education. It begins with the construction of a new definition of feedback. We explain how feedback is a learner-centred process in which impact is a core feature. The chapter then explores the reasons why identifying, let alone measuring, impact is problematic. We briefly revisit the contingent nature of educational research into cause and effect and question the implications for feedback processes that are likely to be experienced by individuals in different ways with different effects over different timescales. It is here we then discuss some ways we conceive the various forms of feedback effect including the intentional and unintentional, immediate and delayed, cognitive, affective, motivational, relational and social

Improving Feedback Research in Naturalistic Settings

This chapter discusses researching feedback inputs and processes to examine effects. Specifically, we promote a research agenda that contributes an understanding of how feedback works, for particular learners, in particular circumstances through research designs that take account of theory, occur in naturalistic settings and focus on students’ sense-making and actions. We draw attention to categories of research on effects of feedback: a) task-related performance/work; b) meta-learning processes such as self-regulation; and c) identity effects such as orienting students to the professionals they wish to become. We also discuss the difficulties in eliciting effects, attributing effects to particular feedback practices and the importance of exploring how effects are achieved and at what points in time, rather than simply looking for outcome