This study will investigate the most efficient way of giving and receiving formative feedback. There will primarily be a focus on whether verbal formative feedback or written formative feedback is found to be more efficient by teachers and students. Furthermore, the study will also investigate if formative feedback is motivating for L2 learners. The purpose of our area of interest is that there is little research done on verbal and written approaches to formative feedback. Moreover, the educational authorities in Sweden claim that formative feedback can have little to no impact at all and in some cases even negative effects, which we find to be problematic. This research study is done on secondary school students in grades 7-9. Our findings included in the results section include eight primary sources with a focus on our area of interest. The findings indicate that a verbal approach to formative feedback is highly appreciated by students and teachers, because of its effectiveness. Our findings show that verbal formative feedback can highlight students' strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, it is efficient as it explains misunderstandings and is understood by the learners. To conclude, formative feedback has a twofold aim, on one hand, it motivates students and on the other hand, it is efficient for assigning grades.

First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education. First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education. First year Humanities and Social Science students’ experiences of engaging with written feedback in a post- 1992 university This thesis examines students’ experiences of engaging with written formative feedback in a post-1992 university. A body of literature on ‘engagement with feedback’ in higher education presents the student as somehow lacking the motivation to engage with feedback. The principles of a feminist methodology were adopted in an attempt to present the underrepresented views of students on the issue of their engagement with feedback. Participants were from two first year undergraduate modules which provided formative feedback on assignments. Qualitative research methods were used: 24 semi-structured interviews, 50 reflective writing documents and 83 questionnaires were collated for open-ended responses and descriptive patterns. Following an analysis of this data, an innovative model was developed. The ‘Student perspective on engaging with feedback model’ was based on the three phases students moved through when engaging with feedback, which was influenced by the type and style of feedback they required at different stages of their transition. This transition involved a period of liminality (a state of betwixt and between) as individuals waited to go through a rite of passage, which often led to students finding themselves in ‘stuck places’ and experiencing feelings of ‘being wrong’. The model demonstrates how firstly, students used the feedback as a ‘sign’ to confirm their learner identities. Secondly, students used the feedback to improve. They valued a personalised dialogue to enable them to do this successfully. Thirdly, they focused on future-orientated feedback, relating to employability and grades. These findings provide the basis for recommendations to HE tutors suggesting that changes to assessment practices and feedback comments may be beneficial for first year undergraduates as they navigate their transition to learning in higher education.

I investigated the problem of why some students do not implement the feedback they are given, when the feedback they receive is formulated in accordance with what we know about best practice in the giving of feedback. I was interested in exploring the factors which may influence students as they do or do not take some form of action to ‘close the gap’ between the standard they have attained and the standard they need to reach. I worked with seven Year 8 boys who were enrolled at an intermediate school in the South Island of New Zealand. The study is qualitative because the methodologies associated with that paradigm are more likely to provide insights into the problem, situated as it is in the experience of students in a classroom setting. I used phenomenography to identify the qualitatively different ways in which the participants viewed the importance and helpfulness of feedback as well as identifying the factors which influenced their acceptance or rejection of the feedback received from their classroom teacher. The categories I identified included supporting progress towards short- and long-term learning goals; the effect of feedback on personal attitudes towards learning; the relationship between the student and the teacher; the type and timing of feedback; the perceived ownership of the work to which the feedback related; and the conditions and understandings of the student. I discussed each of these and formed a phenomenographic outcome space for each of the three basic areas of importance, helpfulness, and factors affecting response. I then used a case approach to prepare case reports on two of the participants, in order to show how the categories identified through the phenomenographic analysis might be manifested in individuals as well as to allow the voices of the students to be heard. I found that each individual embodies a unique combination of the categories, and that it is this unique profile which affects his or her reception and subsequent use of feedback. I then combined the three phenomenographic outcome spaces to form a model of feedback, arranged in four levels, which may be of interest to classroom teachers as they endeavour to improve the learning outcome of the students through tailoring the feedback they give to them. I illustrated the potential use of the model by mapping onto it the profile of the two boys included in the case reports. The differences in, and similarities of, responses of the two boys to feedback are easily discerned. I discussed how these similarities and differences may offer some explanation for differing responses to feedback. To a certain extent the boys have similar outlooks, and may respond in similar ways to feedback which matches with these outlooks. However, at a deeper level, their differences are marked. Feedback which matches the preferences of one is not likely to match those of the other. I argue that in such a case one may accept and act on the feedback while the other may not. I have identified some areas for further research and development which could build on these findings. These include the need to explore the views of girls and other groups of boys on this subject, together with undertaking a project which allows the academic progress of individuals to be tracked once their preferences were identified and mapped onto the model. It would also be useful to construct a suitable instrument for classroom teachers to use for mapping the preferences of their own class members, and to identify any differences in the modifications to their feedback processes which teachers may make to their classroom practice following their use of such an instrument.

Motivation has been shown to be critical for L2 language development and it is thus imperative that teachers consider how classroom methods and tools contribute to student’s motivational state. One such tool, formative feedback, has been shown to help motivate students to complete tasks, and yet formative feedback may also potentially demotivate students under certain conditions. The current study uses semi-structured interviews of five 7-9 grade English teachers in the south of Sweden to investigate some teachers’ views and experiences of written formative feedback and its effect on facilitating or hindering student motivation in the L2 classroom. Regarding usage patterns, we found that teachers generally implement formative feedback in accordance with what is promoted in recent research literature. Furthermore, we found that teachers consider formative feedback to positively affect students in terms of increased motivation and positive academic outcomes. However, teachers also stress the importance of providing the right amount of formative feedback in a timely manner to preclude potentially negative effects such as students not understanding the feedback and thus, becoming demotivated and unable to learn from the feedback provided. Our study indicates that teachers in the Swedish L2 classroom context implement formative feedback to facilitate motivation, since they believe the concept helps students develop their knowledge, furthers engagement, creates awareness of development and provides a driving force within students to work harder.

This critical autoethnographic exploration evolved following an initial curiosity concerning diversity of practice amongst (other) Lecturers when constructing feedback for mature undergraduate Registered Nurses. As an early exploration revealed that I was viewing my professional experiences as a learner and practitioner through a previously unacknowledged working class lens, I began to foreground personal experiences from which a more relational understanding of the intersecting nature of personal, professional and broader influences on practice has emerged. A reclaimed marginalised perspective provided an ethical direction for the research and for the development of a more nuanced understanding of feedback practice. Within this thesis, autobiographical writing, stories from practice and theory share a symbiotic and reciprocal relationship illustrating the intersectionality of multiple influences on practice. This layered and intertwined approach to data generation and interpretation allowed me to critically engage with my social and practice worlds incorporating the tensions and dilemmas of what it means to practice as a teacher and to be human within the academy. The theory of restorative learning (Lange, 2004, 2007) underpins the structure of the thesis, foregrounding the emerging influence of a restored marginalised perspective. The concepts of habitus, field, capital and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1973) have been used to think through how these restored perspectives and personal experiences intersect with professional and broader influences in practice. Through autoethnographic exploration insights emerged; the influence of a wounded learner habitus on feedback practice, a renegotiation of a privileged position in the feedback relationship and the development of trickster properties as a device to open up dialogue and reflexive spaces within my own culture in order to develop feedback practice beyond the self. In practice we are rarely encouraged to confront why we think the way we do about ourselves as teachers, particularly in relation to the social, cultural and political world around us. This thesis contributes to the ongoing scholarly conversation concerning influences on professional practice from a practitioner perspective and the role of a layered approach to autoethnography in making these perspectives accessible.

To teach effectively, teachers rely on feedback from their students. But students often dislike conventional forms of feedback such as taking tests or answering questions in front of their peers. For my MFA thesis project, I have designed tools that k-12 educators can use to elicit formative feedback, even from quiet and reserved students and those who do not feel their feedback is of value. My overarching intent with these lowstakes, low-tech, inexpensive tools is to improve teaching and learning. By giving teachers tools that generate useful feedback in a way that is low-stakes for the students, all students are given a voice. Through this design process, I also developed some generalizable principles about the way in which good formative feedback can be elicited in learning environments. / text

This thesis describes the development of Computer-Aided Assessment questions for elementary discrete and decision mathematics at the school/university interface, stressing the pedagogy behind the questions’ design and the development of methodology for assessing their efficacy in improving students’ engagement and perceptions, as well as on their exams results. The questions give instant and detailed feedback and hence are valuable as diagnostic, formative or summative tools. A total of 275 questions were designed and coded for five topics, numbers, sets, logic, linear programming and graph theory, commonly taught to students of mathematics, computer science, engineering and management. Pedagogy and programming problems with authoring questions were resolved and are discussed in specific topic contexts and beyond. The delivery of robust and valid objective questions, even within the constraints of CAA, is therefore feasible. Different question types and rich feedback comprising text, equations and diagrams that allow random parameters to produce millions of realisations at run time, can give CAA an important role in teaching mathematics at this level. Questionnaires identified that CAA was generally popular with students, with the vast majority seeing CAA not only as assessment but also as a learning resource. To test the impact of CAA on students’ learning, an analysis of the exam scripts quantified its effect on class means and standard deviations. This also identified common student errors, which fed into the question design and editing processes by providing evidence-based mal-rules. Four easily-identified indicators (correctly-written remainders, conversion of binary/octal/hexadecimal numbers, use of correct set notation {…} and consistent layout of truth tables) were examined in student exam scripts to find out if the CAA helps students to improve examination answers. The CAA answer files also provided the questions’ facilities and discriminations, potentially giving teachers specific information on which to base and develop their teaching and assessment strategies. We conclude that CAA is a successful tool for the formative/summative assessment of mathematics at this level and has a positive effect on students’ learning.

Creating an exam that ensures an even coverage over all the Intended Learning Outcomes and at the same time ensures that to pass, the student should have passed all the Intended Learning Outcomes can be a difficult task. After an exam have been graded, formative feedback should be given to the students, especially in those cases where they did not pass the exam. This can be a time consuming process, and because of this, it is not always possible to give as good feedback as one would otherwise like. In this project an exam tool was created, for assisting in creating exams and give individual formative feedback to the students after an exam. By storing all the questions in a database, where each question is connected to an Intended Learning Outcome, along with writing the questions in a standardised format, with regards to point representations, grading rubrics and references it becomes possible to automatically generate exams. Generated individual feedback is created by combining the information in the question together with the students result. The feedback provides motivation of given grade, which topics a student should read up on, along with recommended reading instructions. In those cases a student got a full mark, it is also possible to provide further study instructions, this can be anything from recommended articles and book chapter, to courses. Differential privacy have been used to anonymize the grade distribution to make it possible to show the students how the exam went, without risk exposing what grade a certain student got. The exam tool created achieves all of these goals, however there are still much room for improvement. The anonymisation function needs further development, since differential privacy is not suitable for small datasets. The usability of the interface and feedback reports needs more work. However in its current state it is fully functional and have been used in numerous courses.

The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of different types of feedback on learning pure-tone audiometry using a simulator. Participants were 51 undergraduate students in the Department of Communication Disorders. Participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups whilst undertaking pure-tone audiometry training with the Clinical Audiology Simulator (CAS). One group received summative feedback during the learning task while the second group received formative feedback. Probes were administered to examine participants’ knowledge of pure-tone audiometry following training. In addition, a subjective workload analysis was used to measure perceived cognitive load during training and assessment. Between-groups analysis was conducted to establish the effect of feedback on learning and cognitive load. Data regarding how much time each student spent training on the simulator was also collected, and a regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between time and learning. Formative feedback was found to have a large positive effect on learning in comparison to summative feedback. Cognitive load was perceived as being higher for students receiving formative feedback during training compared to those receiving summative feedback. In subsequent assessment, the formative feedback group reported a lower cognitive load than the summative feedback group. No relationship was observed between time spent training on the simulator and probes outcome. The formative feedback training mode of the CAS proved to be effective in supporting learning and cognitive load in novice students. The findings suggest that the type of feedback employed when using simulators affects learning outcomes for users.

The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers in Sweden and Vietnam provides formative feedback to their pupils. It is our ambition to find out what differences and similarities there are in how and why teachers work with formative feedback, in both countries. Moreover, the last aim is to look at how Swedish teachers and Vietnamese teachers can learn from each other. We will interview two teachers from Sweden and two from Vietnam to see how they work with formative feedback. All interviewees are English teachers and work in primary school. We found that formative feedback is something all four teachers work with, more or less. However, they all express that oral formative feedback occur more often than written. Of course there are a lot of differences of the implementation of feedback but we can find multiple similarities as well. Furthermore, differences are many in the two countries, for example, the amount of pupils in classes. Another example is that the teachers in Vietnam had no knowledge about formative feedback before our interviews. Still, they manage to implement formative feedback in different ways, without the proper terms.