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.

摘要

在世界各地的教育系统中，教师在向学生提供反馈意见方面受到越来越多的质量保证审查。这在高等教育中尤为重要，因为学生对反馈的不满引起了机构的关注。通过对来自各种机构类型的 28 名教育工作者的半结构化访谈，我们调查了教育工作者如何感知、解释和制定反馈的竞争功能。数据表明，教育工作者经常遇到专业失调，其中感知到的质量保证要求与他们自己关于学生学习在反馈过程中的中心地位的信念相冲突。这种不和谐源于确保学生满意度和避免投诉的压力。数据还表明，通过要求管理竞争受众以获取反馈意见，反馈具有“双重职责”。反馈过程的质量改进可以减少对教师投入的关注，而更多地关注学生对反馈反应的证据，从而带来收益。