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This exploratory practice research is a collaborative effort by five university ESL instructors to investigate how students in their program's advanced writing course view, respond to, and make meaning of the feedback they receive. Through semistructured interviews with focus groups, this research aims to provide students with a forum to express their perceptions, opinions, and insights. The teacher-researchers found that participants' relationship with feedback consisted of a set of interactions with the comments and text on the writing assignment itself, with classmates during peer review, and with the instructor during personal communication. Through examining these interactions, the teacher-researchers found that student views of feedback were often driven by an emotional response that was heavily influenced by grades and the teacher's written comments. Students had mixed, and often negative, reactions to receiving feedback from peers, but they spoke positively of their one-on-one interactions with their instructors. In response to their findings, the teacher-researchers reflect on their own practice and pose questions to the field at large. They conclude by urging other teachers and administrators to create more space for students to voice their views and insights.

One of the problematic features of the “skills discourse” is the view that skills are decontextualized bits of knowledge and disposition. Instead, how skills such as communication are defined and used are shaped by cultural, political, and situational factors. In this article, we integrate theory from communication studies, critical discourse analysis, and cognitive anthropology to examine how 96 students, educators, and employers in nursing and engineering define and describe communication skills. Thematic and social network analyses revealed multiple “genres” of communication, their association with specific situations, variation in the structure of situated notions of communication by role group, and cultural models underlying their use. Results suggest new approaches for research and practice regarding teaching and cultural diversity in higher education.

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