Assessment Matters 18: 2024

Kia ora koutou katoa. Welcome to the 2024 special issue of Assessment Matters: Feedback Within the Context of Compulsory Education. As currently conceptualised, feedback is the crucial interaction that occurs between teacher and learner(s) during learning and teaching, which will aid the improvement process through the identification of a learning gap and the actions necessary to close that gap. For feedback to fulfil this formative function, that is to reduce the disparity between a student… Read more

Feedback is significant in language learning and teaching. Nevertheless, how feedback is utilised effectively in various instructional approaches and assessment tools remains contentious. In portfolio scholarship, feedback plays a pivotal role in aligning language teaching, learning, and assessment seamlessly. Although feedback has been constantly reported in second-language portfolio studies, not much, thus far, has been investigated to understand the role of feedback in both formats,… Read more

While researchers and practitioners have long known that differentiating formative feedback (FF) is a requisite for creating more equitable learning opportunities for students, less is known about how teachers plan for, enact, and reflect on differentiated FF dialogues with students individually, in small groups, or as a whole class—a lens on practice we refer to as “configurations”. This empirical, qualitative case study used a new FF framework to explore how middle-school math and science… Read more

Teachers often provide or set up opportunities for feedback within classroom contexts. How they understand what feedback is and how it should be given is essential to their feedback practices. Since feedback is commonly a communicative exchange between teacher and students or students and their peers, it is essential to understand teacher conceptions about feedback. This study explored 18 teachers’ conceptions of feedback and how they were enacted. Phenomenographic analysis identified five… Read more

Using data generated from three teachers and 18 students in three senior English language learning (ELL) classrooms in Indonesia, we respond to calls for research that investigates the impact of societal rules or cultural norms that influence how people think and act about feedback and their place within the feedback process. Particular attention is paid to teachers’ understandings and enactment of oral feedback, and their students’ understandings of and responses to this feedback. Findings… Read more