‘It has a purpose beyond justifying a mark’: Examining the alignment between the purpose and practice of feedback

Abstract

Research has shown that written feedback is important for studentlearning and development. However, the messages embedded in feed-back may lead to students being misled about what they need to learnor how they need to develop. This article reports on a small-scale inves-tigation into the messages embedded in feedback. Legitimation CodeTheory was used to first conceptualise the often-hidden purpose of adiscipline (English Studies), and concomitantly of feedback within thediscipline, and second to analyse actual comments given to first-yearstudents on their assignments. It was found that there is a clear mis-alignment between the purpose and practice of feedback, thereby sug-gesting that students are receiving misleading messages about whatthey need for success within the discipline. This may have implicationsbeyond merely passing the module. A suggestion is made to activelyconsider, and develop, feedback as a discipline-specific literacy.