“Thank you for the feedback, but no!” Listening to the experiences of first-year students encountering the “power” of teacher feedback

Abstract

The study takes place in a Higher Education Institution in the Netherlands amongst first-year social science students and investigates their experiences of receiving teacher feedback. It specifically examines student feedback sense-making and responses, as well as how the surrounding contexts and the student-teacher relationship influence this engagement.
Using a mixed-methods approach (questionnaire, narrative frames, semi-structured interviews and photo/object elicitation), the study focuses on the self-reported experiences of eight students encountering teacher feedback and highlights the emotional territory of feedback encounters and its situated nature, based on students’ standpoint (Collins, 2019).
Students’ collective experiences encompass various aspects such as the entanglement of contradicting feedback cultures with a dominating view of feedback as summative, the complexity of the socio-emotional landscape influencing students’ engagement with feedback, the mediating role of a positive student-teacher relationship for (critical) feedback uptake, and the (un)supportive role of structures in enabling or hindered opportunities for students to use feedback.
While students’ lived experiences of (dis)engaging with teacher feedback were mostly monological and transactional, the presence of ‘feedback talk’ during the consultation sessions acted as dialogic micro-moments that broke through the cracks of a seemingly solid summative feedback culture, therefore opening opportunities to emphasise a praxis of relationality. The implications for future research highlight the importance of uncovering power dynamics in feedback dialogues, considering plural feedback literacies, and calling for greater examination of the unfolding of student agency within their contexts-for-action.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Dundee
Supervisor	Richard Holme (Supervisor) & Anna Robb (Supervisor)