Burm et al. designed and implemented an innovation focused on training and deploying
medical personnel from one specialism to assess surgical trainees in another specialism
[1]. A major finding from the focus group
interview data was that learners questioned the credibility of the feedback providers and
the constructiveness of the feedback messages. It seemed that learners desired more than an
assessment of their competence, they wanted to see how their performance could be improved.
For this to transpire, they felt they needed specialist advice from someone who had done
similar operations many times before.
As an educational researcher specializing in assessment and feedback, I find much to
learn from varied traditions, cultures and perspectives offered by different disciplines.
Whilst there are useful generic principles of assessment and feedback, tensions and
compromises between generic and discipline-specific features of assessment and feedback
practice loom large. There are learning cultures and feedback cultures at the heart of
disciplinary practices [2].
A major challenge for assessment practice is that assessment always does double duty
[3]: it needs to fulfil multiple functions.
Most commonly, and relevant to the contribution of Burm et al., assessment needs to provide
a fair appraisal of current achievement whilst at the same time contributing to ongoing
development of the individual being assessed.
Feedback information also does double duty [4]. Its functions include: justifying the grade awarded; offering
commentary that may be helpful on future tasks; and providing an audit trail for quality
assurance purposes. Feedback doing double duty seems highly pertinent to the Burm et al.
paper. Learners seemed to want a coach who could support them in advancing their skills but
instead they got an assessor who scored their performance. A checklist reinforced this
mismatch by itemizing in a procedural way rather than facilitating nuanced feedback
interactions. Authentic feedback in medical education might, for example, profitably
involve physical demonstration of manual procedures [5].
Feedback exchanges often fail as communication because participants are on different
wavelengths. Double duty confounds the difficulties of shared interpretations.
Communication and negotiation of goals can minimize misunderstandings and conflicting
agendas but need those elusive elements of time, space and longer-term
relationships.
The challenges of communication reinforce the social and relational elements of feedback
processes. In the section ‘Fostering the feedback alliance’, Burm et al. raise some
important issues around relationships and trust. The learners seemed most to crave,
‘competence trust’ [6, 7], a perception that the interlocutor has the capability
to provide useful and meaningful feedback that can help them improve their
performance.
The concept of the feedback alliance reinforces a need for partnership in feedback
processes. Rather than using the term ‘alliance’, educational researchers have talked about
‘shared responsibilities’ in feedback processes [8, 9]. Teachers are
responsible for designing opportunities for learners to take action in response to feedback
information, whereas learners carry responsibilities to engage with and use
feedback.
One of the starting points for Burm et al. was that faculty generally lack assessment
expertise. The same can be said for capacities in managing feedback processes. These
lacunae are not surprising, faculty have a lot on their plate: updating disciplinary
knowledge; obtaining competitive research grants; generating world-class research outputs;
teaching in rapidly evolving circumstances; fulfilling administrative duties; and so on. To
what extent does the development of assessment and feedback expertise carry weight amidst
a multitude of demands? Perhaps it should. After all, assessment drives student learning,
and effective feedback processes are one of the most promising ways of improving
performance.
The concept of feedback literacy carries potential to contribute to the further
development of feedback processes. Student feedback literacy represents the understandings,
capacities and dispositions to process and use feedback [10]. To make the most of feedback opportunities, learners need support
from educators in designing feedback in ways which enable uptake and development. Promising
strategies include embedding the development of feedback literacy within the curriculum
[11] and designs for feedback that makes an
impact [12].
Burm et al. are to be commended for their honest and transparent reporting of an
assessment innovation. The main implications of this commentary are threefold. Assessment
and feedback doing double duty needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Feedback processes
can flourish when there are feedback alliances and shared responsibilities between
educators and learners. The mutual development of educator and learner feedback literacy
holds promise in maximizing positive impacts from feedback processes.
Open Access This article is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other
third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons
licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is
not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to
obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence,
visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
