Twelve tips for developing feedback literacy in health professions learners

Abstract

Despite feedback being widely-used by health professions educators as a tool to develop clinical competencies, strategies to guide its successful implementation remain limited. In addition, health professions learners are often dissatisfied with the quality and/or volume of feedback they receive. Efforts to better engage learners in feedback processes has resulted in the development of a number of theoretical frameworks to guide educators, one being feedback literacy. Feedback literacy can be conceptualised as a learner's ability to recognise, comprehend, generate and take action on feedback they encounter during their learning to aid health professions learners' clinical competency development. Here, we draw on both a conceptual framework of feedback literacy and other contemporary feedback literature to provide twelve practical tips by which feedback literacy can be developed in health professions learners.

The Digital Transformation of Higher Education Teaching: Four Pedagogical Prescriptions to Move Active Learning Pedagogy Forward

“…It should also be noted that peer assessment as a formative practice has been found to be effective across a wide range of contexts (Double et al, 2020). However, although various models of formative feedback have been suggested across disciplines, none have been specifically proposed in a digital educational context (Steen-Utheim and Wittek, 2017; Tripodi et al, 2020). Besides in-person feedback, digital education offers unique opportunities for instant feedback by integrating it into the software.…”

How does a move towards a coaching approach impact the delivery of written feedback in undergraduate clinical education?

“…In pursuit of this new educators to the school spend two weeks shadowing experienced educators before independent practice. The approach described focused on first promoting the practice of feedback with a bespoke learning activity, moving to a point where practice is developed informally through continual discussion and refinement of feedback practice (Tripodi et al, 2020 ; Winstone & Boud, 2019 ).…”

“…Educators use feedback as an intervention to support learner development (Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ). In support of the development of feedback literacy, practice has recently shifted to encourage proactive recipience (Allen & Molloy, 2017 ; Noble et al, 2020 ) and continuous review (Tripodi et al, 2020 ). Although learners are seen as active agents in this developmental process (Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ; Winstone et al, 2017a , b ), learners and educators may hold different perspectives on feedback (Ozuah et al, 2007 ).…”

“…However, several authors suggest that many clinicians have no training as educators, and therefore are not aware of how to give good feedback, often having been recipients of poor feedback themselves (Bush et al, 2013 ; Clynes & Raftery, 2008 ; Tekian et al, 2017 ). Continuing to support educator understanding of the content and context of feedback messages, that guide learners towards the next stage in their development journey, appears justified (Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ; Tripodi et al, 2020 ; Winstone et al, 2017a , b ).…”

“…In this approach learners and educators must be able to evaluate feedback messages, recognising the emotional barriers and strategies that smooth the path to development and self-regulated learning (Molloy et al, 2020 ; Winstone et al, 2017a , b ; Panadero, 2017 ). Developing understanding surrounding the emotional content of feedback messages, through a coaching approach to feedback, may help to drive changes in feedback practice that will ultimately support learners (Reynolds, 2020 ; Tripodi et al, 2020 ) Other barriers that may exist, particularly when learners do not value feedback, or have less effective learning strategies, is feedback accessibility. Learners have reported being overwhelmed with volumes of feedback, particularly when delivered via learning management systems (Winstone et al, 2020 ).…”