Who is feedback for? The influence of accountability and quality assurance agendas on the enactment of feedback processes

Abstract

In education systems across the world, teachers are under increasing quality assurance scrutiny in relation to the provision of feedback comments to students. This is particularly pertinent in higher education, where accountability arising from student dissatisfaction with feedback causes concern for institutions. Through semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight educators from a range of institution types, we investigated how educators perceive, interpret, and enact competing functions of feedback. The data demonstrate that educators often experienced professional dissonance where perceived quality assurance requirements conflicted with their own beliefs about the centrality of student learning in feedback processes. Such dissonance arose from the pressure to secure student satisfaction, and avoid complaints. The data also demonstrate that feedback does ‘double duty’ through the requirement to manage competing audiences for feedback comments. Quality enhancement of feedback processes could profitably focus less on teacher inputs and more on evidence of student response to feedback.