Feedback as an epistemic practice

Feedback is often cited as one of the strongest influences on student learning. Current conceptualisations of feedback are largely divided across two paradigms that position students either as ‘passive’ recipients of feedback (a transfer of information), or as ‘active’ participants in feedback (a dialogical process). Ironically, both perspectives have eschewed an interest in knowledge and knowing: two ideas supposedly at the very centre of university education. In a bid to centre learners, ‘new paradigm’ feedback research has emphasised social aspects of feedback at the expense of epistemic ones. In this study, we centre knowledge and knowing as the heart of feedback practices in higher education. To this end, we propose a novel theorisation of feedback as ‘knowing in action’. Our conceptual work is grounded in an empirical analysis of feedback encounters in an ethnographic research project in archaeological fieldwork. We showcase the epistemic bases of feedback in examining three feedback conflicts that have traditionally been portrayed as social issues: feedback seeking, feedback hierarchies, and feedback cultures. Reframing feedback in this way recognises its crucial role not only as a resource for knowledge-building but as a process whereby students can become legitimate knowers in their disciplines.