Abstract:
There is increasing evidence that feedback is a key factor in successful teaching
and learning. It is also clear that there are effective and less effective forms of
feedback. To be most effective, feedback should incorporate assessment for
learning principles.
Although there is a large body of literature on feedback, there is limited use of the
student’s voice, and little from a New Zealand context. This thesis investigates
students’ understandings of feedback in New Zealand classrooms. A feedback
typology is used to categorise and analyse examples of teacher feedback given by
the students.
Individual student interviews were conducted with responses informing the kinds of
questions used for the teacher interviews. Advisory work in schools that involves
classroom observations on feedback was also used to substantiate the findings. The
sample used for this research came from two schools, four classrooms and
focussed on sixteen students. The classes ranged from Years 3-6, which meant that
the students were aged between 7 and 10.
The analysis concludes that while New Zealand students can describe a range of
both evaluative and descriptive feedback their understandings do not always match
what the teacher intended. The feedback typology was found to be a useful tool but
was problematic in that there was no assurance that feedback was against shared
expectations of the task.
