A community of practice approach to understanding how students develop feedback literacy enabling the processing and enactment of feedback

Abstract

Feedback research in higher education indicates teachers are required to support students in developing feedback literacy (ie the ability to make sense of feedback and use it). Emphasising the role of the teacher is problematic as students may develop feedback literacy outside the formal curriculum when sharing feedback with peers. Our study focuses on students’ situated learning within a community of practice (CoP), to answer two research questions: ‘Do students develop feedback literacy through being in a CoP?’ and ‘Does a CoP enable understanding of how students process and enact feedback?’ This qualitative study employs focus groups with 14 graduate entry medical students from a UK medical school. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts occurred. We show: (1) students develop feedback literacy outside the formal curriculum. (2) Using a value creation cycle (VCC), we showed how students process and enact distributed feedback within a CoP. (3) We illustrate how knowledgeability, knowledge in person in practice, modulates participants’ identity, and hence their learning as they process and enact feedback. We advocate advancing the discussions on feedback literacy within higher education through a better understanding of the learning occurring within teacher and student communities of practices.