Higher Education

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00895-9

Feedback literacy: a critical review of an emerging concept

Juuso Henrik Nieminen1 · David Carless1

Accepted: 23 June 2022

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022

Abstract
Systemic challenges for feedback practice are widely discussed in the research literature.
The expanding mass higher education systems, for instance, seem to inhibit regular and sustained
teacher-student interactions. The concept of feedback literacy, representing students’ and teach-
ers’ capacities to optimize the benefits of feedback opportunities, has gained widespread atten-
tion by offering new ways of tackling these challenges. This study involves a critical review of
the first 49 published articles on feedback literacy. Drawing on science and technology studies,
and in particular on Popkewitz’s concept of fabrication, we explore how research has invented
feedback literacy as a way of reframing feedback processes through the idea of individual skill
development. First, we analyze how research has fabricated students and teachers through their
feedback literacies that can be tracked, measured, and developed. Here, there exists a concep-
tual shift from analyzing feedback as external input to feedback literacy as a psychological con-
struct residing within individuals. This interpretation carries positive implications of student and
teacher empowerment, whilst downplaying policy-level challenges facing feedback interactions.
The second contrasting fabrication positions feedback literate students and teachers as socio-cul-
turally situated, communal agents. We conclude that feedback literacy is a powerful idea that, if
used carefully, carries potential for reimagining feedback in higher education. It also, however,
risks psychologizing students’ and teachers’ feedback behaviors amidst prevalent assessment and
grading policies. We call for further reflexivity in considering whether feedback literacy research
aims to challenge or complement the broader socio-political landscapes of higher education.

Keywords Feedback literacy · Feedback · Learner-centred feedback · Critical review ·

Science and technology studies

Introduction

Feedback research is a dynamic sub-field within the broader arena of higher education stud-
ies. It represents an important branch of teaching and learning research, not least because
feedback processes are cited as one of the potentially most powerful means of enhancing

* Juuso Henrik Nieminen

juuso@hku.hk
David Carless
dcarless@hku.hk
1
Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China

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student achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Wisniewski et al., 2020). Feedback research
in higher education (hereafter ‘the field’) has mainly focused on seeking solutions to the
practical issues of feedback, such as how to involve students actively in feedback processes,
how to provide feedback at scale, or how to satisfy students as measured by quality assur-
ance metrics. Recent developments have suggested that students’ and teachers’ feedback
literacies carry significant potential to maximize benefits from feedback processes (Boud
& Dawson, 2021; Tai et al., 2021). While feedback research is vibrant, and while multiple
reviews have synthesized research evidence and models of feedback, little attention has been
afforded to investigations of the field itself. What kind of scientific knowledge is produced
by feedback research and why? Accordingly, the aim of our study is to critically review
research on feedback literacy in higher education by analyzing how this innovative concept
has been invented and what are its underlying assumptions and potential consequences.
Feedback research and practice have tended to be dominated by transmission models
that portray students as receivers of feedback information (Winstone & Carless, 2019).
Such transmission models often do not fulfill students’ perceived needs, promote purpose-
ful engagement or appeal to students’ affective preferences (O’Donovan, 2017; Winstone
et al., 2017). Indeed, feedback research often begins by portraying a ‘crisis’ of feedback
on the grounds that students commonly flag feedback as one of the less satisfying aspects
of their university experience (Buckley, 2020). Responding to this supposed crisis, feed-
back research has in recent years promoted a ‘new paradigm’ of feedback, moving beyond
the ‘old paradigm’ of transmission of feedback information to envisage processes in which
learners generate, make sense of and use information for enhancement purposes (Carless,
2015; Winstone & Carless, 2019). Research has discussed the learning potential of differ-
ent forms of new paradigm practices, such as peer feedback (Nicol et al., 2014; Ibarra-Sáiz
et al., 2020); digitally enabled feedback (Mahoney et al., 2019; Wood, 2022); and internal
feedback processes (Butler & Winne, 1995; Nicol, 2021). While the field has traditionally
drawn on practice-driven and individualistic-cognitive approaches (Evans, 2013; Nieminen
et al., 2022a), the new paradigm has contributed to a broadening of the theoretical tool-
box of feedback research toward understanding the social dimensions of feedback through
viewpoints such as social constructivism (Carless, 2020), sociocultural approaches (Ester-
hazy et al., 2021) and sociomaterialism (Gravett, 2022).
A key building block within new paradigm feedback practices is the notion of feed-
back literacy. The idea of student feedback literacy was first introduced by Sutton (2012),
envisaging such literacies as a part of broader academic literacies that students need as they
accommodate to higher education (Lea & Street, 1998). This idea was later expanded by
Carless & Boud (2018) who defined student feedback literacy as the understandings, capaci-
ties and dispositions that learners need to maximize benefits from feedback processes.
This paper prompted a significant increase in published papers about feedback literacy
and according to Scopus (accessed March 2022) is the most cited higher education article
published since 2018. Complementary teacher feedback literacy denotes teachers’ capaci-
ties to design and facilitate effective feedback processes (Boud & Dawson, 2021; Carless &
Winstone, 2020). It seems that the feedback research community has become increasingly
interested in understanding feedback processes from the viewpoint of individuals’ skills and
capacities; the possible consequences for such a conceptual shift are discussed in our study.
Given the rapid expansion of feedback literacy research, it is now timely to review its
assumptions and critically analyze how this vibrant concept has evolved. We adopt the inter-
disciplinary approach of science and technology studies (STS) that explores the creation and
consequences of scientific knowledge. STS offers potential for analyzing scientific innova-
tions: it enables us to understand the evolution of ‘feedback literacy’ by focusing on how

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research has invented it. As STS understands research as a socially situated practice, it offers
us a ‘bird’s eye view’ approach to our own field of feedback research, and thus novel ways
of discussing the broader positioning of feedback research amidst higher education research,
policy and practice. Our first research objective, then, is: How has feedback literacy been
conceptualized? This innovative approach to feedback has enabled a new way of talking and
thinking about the participants of feedback, namely, in terms of their feedback literacies.
Our second objective focuses on analyzing how the feedback literate student/teacher has
been constructed as a research object. Our study supplements earlier reviews on educational
feedback by focusing solely on feedback literacy, which offers not only a new model for
feedback (as suggested by Lipnevich & Panadero, 2021) but a novel way of reframing feed-
back processes in higher education through participants’ feedback literacies.

Setting the scene: feedback literacy research in its context

Next, we outline the higher education context of feedback literacy research. Congruent
with STS, we understand scientific research and its creation within historical, cultural,
social, and political contexts. First, we emphasize the context of higher education with
its global shifts in policies and practices. The globally expanding mass higher education
systems (see Marginson, 2016) might challenge sustainable feedback practices by setting
barriers for regular and sustained student-teacher interactions. Moreover, critical studies
have analyzed how ‘common good’ models of higher education have been eroded through
neoliberal ideologies of marketization and competition. Within such landscapes, students
have been increasingly positioned through ‘the consumer model’ (Bunce et al., 2017) and
teaching as a way to promote individuals’ skills and competencies as market commodi-
ties (Wheelahan et al., 2022). A pertinent idea is that broader social and political chal-
lenges are interpreted as classroom-level issues of ‘pedagogy’ and ‘design’ (Biesta, 2009).
Ostrowicka (2022), for example, showed how higher education research has framed issues
concerning labor markets and unemployment as pedagogical means by focusing on the
development of skills, competencies and graduate skillsets, rather than engaging in broader
socio-political conversations concerning these issues.
These landscapes of higher education frame assessment and feedback. Within neoliberal
higher education, students become capital and their assessment grades come to reflect their
market value for institutions and for themselves. Neoliberal ideologies of competition and
accountability make it hard for individual students, teachers or researchers to effect change,
and this is particularly the case for assessment and grading policies (Tannock, 2017). Test-
ing regimes position students as performers, within regulated and proceduralized systems,
driven by accountability forces (Evans, 2011; Raaper, 2017). Such positioning of students
as ‘performers’ overshadows feedback practices and student engagement (Nieminen et al.,
2022b), encouraging students to ‘check the grade and log out’, as put by Winstone et al.
(2021a), rather than to deeply engage with feedback for the sake of lifelong learning. These
issues of feedback lie deep in the structures of higher education. For example, Winstone
et al. (2021b) discussed how student satisfaction surveys largely portray students as passive
receivers of feedback, which reflects a systemic understanding of feedback through the old
transmission paradigm.
Of particular relevance to our analysis is the role of feedback literacy research amidst
the field of assessment research beyond higher education. Assessment research has for
long been tied to the ‘modernist discourse’ of assessment that is “rooted in a rationalist
vocabulary of scientific measurement” (Broadfoot, 1998, p. 156). Broadfoot discussed

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how assessment research values the ideals of psychometrics and performativity in ways
that produce “serious barriers” (p. 162) to the very purposes of higher education. In the
‘era of measurement’, as put by Biesta (2009), assessment research has been focused
less on the ethics and consequences of assessment, instead prioritizing technical issues
such as validity, reliability, and efficiency. Assessment and feedback research in this
vein might complement and even strengthen the prevalent neoliberal ideologies of indi-
vidualism and competition (Nieminen et al., 2022a; Tannock, 2017; Torrance, 2017).

Framing our analysis

Two analytic frames are necessary to address our research objectives. The first research
objective is addressed by positioning feedback literacy studies within the frame of aca-
demic literacies, emanating from the origins of feedback literacy (Sutton, 2012). The
second objective is addressed by analyzing feedback literacy research through Popke-
witz’s concept of fabrication. This concept unearths how research fabricates new ways
of understanding people and conducting research on them.

Academic literacies

First, we needed conceptual tools to understand various conceptualizations of feedback

literacy. We wanted to capture not just different definitions but the various assumptions
and underpinnings of the concepts: the epistemic (questions of knowledge and knowing)
and ontic (questions of reality and being) premises of different conceptualizations.
For this purpose, we utilized the framework of Academic Literacies (Lea & Street,
1998, 2006) that guided the first article to use the term feedback literacy (Sutton, 2012).
Lea and Street problematized the notion of ‘academic literacy’ by elaborating a three-
fold conceptualization that distinguished between academic skills, socialization and lit-
eracies. Each of these views address how research comes to understand academic litera-
cies. In this framework, skills and capacities are suggestive of identifying individuals’
skills, capabilities and competencies that, if lacking, need to be developed. Lea and
Street called this a deficit model and argued that such views are often deployed by indi-
vidual-focused fields of research such as cognitive sciences. Secondly, academic social-
ization addressed the induction of students into disciplinary and/or national academic
cultures. Research on this approach, according to Lea and Street, often draws on social
epistemologies and socio-cultural theories through, for example, social psychology and
anthropology. Thirdly, academic literacies concern academic identities constructed
through discourse and power. This notion relies on a radically constructivist approach
to knowing and being, understanding that the reality is constructed through discourse;
studies with such an approach often draw on critical theory and discourse analysis. Lea
and Street (1998) proposed that these three approaches to students’ academic literacies
are not separate but cumulative in that they build on each other. Given that feedback is
an important part of academic literacies, we make use of this three-fold framework to
draw distinctions between various ways of conceptualizing feedback literacy.

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Fabrication

We use the concept of fabrication developed by Thomas Popkewitz (2008a, 2008b, 2013) to
understand how feedback research has invented a new way of knowing students and teachers: as
feedback literate individuals. Whilst fabrication in common parlance refers to researcher mal-
practice, we use it in the sense of STS to understand how educational research comes to shape
and construct different kinds of people. Popkewitz developed this concept specifically for such
analyses in educational research: it provides us critical tools to understand the invention of ‘the
feedback literate student/teacher’ as objects of research, analysis, and development. The concept
of fabrication enables us to understand how feedback research has shifted its gaze from external
feedback inputs to the internal, psychological processes of students and teachers.
Fabrication refers to the “grid of historical practices that makes the object of research possible
to ‘see’ and act on” (Popkewitz, 2013 p. 440). It enables us to analyze how feedback research
has ‘seen’ students and teachers through the lens of feedback literacy, and how these people can
then be ‘acted on’ through feedback literacy interventions. According to Popkewitz, the process
of fabrication consists of two nuances. First, educational research produces fictions to talk about
and interpret things that are happening in the world (Popkewitz, 2013). Educational research
generates fictions about different kinds of people, such as ‘adolescents’, ‘students’, ‘feedback lit-
erate people’, and so forth, to conduct research on them. These ‘fictions’ reflect the historical and
political surroundings of educational research. For example, Popkewitz (2008a) has analyzed
how students have been increasingly understood in research through psychological expert knowl-
edge as cognitive individuals. As such, fictions are not ‘fictitious’ as they become real through
pedagogical practices, such as individuals coming to understand themselves as a certain kind
of a learner. The second nuance of fabrication concerns the manufacturing of the fictions, or
how research turns the fictions into something researchable: how fictions become real and mate-
rial. For example, the fiction of ‘a feedback literate student’ might manifest in practice through
research-based interventions, that in turn encourages our understanding of students through
‘feedback literacy’, warranting more research on the topic.
Through fabrication, the idea of the ‘desired student’ is formulated, followed by selection, clas-
sification, and intervention for those who do not meet the ideal. As research develops, these pro-
cesses become more and more fine-grained, as categories between different types of students are
created, tested, and revised. A novel psychometric scale might enable researchers to divide students
scientifically into various categories, such as ‘at risk groups’. People might come to understand
themselves as certain kinds of people through research-based practices by learning “what is desir-
able and possible (or not) for the fabricated kind of person” (Bagger, 2022, p. 109).
An analysis of fabrication is always a contextual one as it gives focus to the conditions
through which those categories and types of defining people’s existence are made possible as
objects of thought and action (Popkewitz, 2013). An analysis of fabrication historicizes such
categorizations as they are constructed through research within certain historical, social, cul-
tural and political contexts. We ground our work on the contextualization presented above.

Methodology

Study aims and orientation

To answer our research objectives, we combine review methodologies with a STS-

oriented analysis. By using the framework of academic literacies, we aimed to

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understand how feedback literacy has been conceptualized. Furthermore, by using the
concept of fabrication we aimed to unpack how students and teachers could be under-
stood through ‘feedback literacy’. Of different review traditions, ours resembles the
one of critical reviews. A critical review is suitable for our purposes because its meth-
ods focus on identifying unknown grounds, contradictions, and controversies inform-
ing future phases of conceptual development (Grant & Booth, 2009). We analyze the
underlying premises of feedback literacy research on which it is built and provide a
roadmap for future research. We provide a narrative, conceptual synthesis of the stud-
ies we analyze (Grant & Booth, 2009).

The search process and selection

The literature search was first conducted in July 2021 using the Scopus database. We
chose to focus our review on journal articles given that these are commonly regarded
as a high form of scientific knowledge production. The search terms were feedback lit-
eracy AND higher education OR university OR undergraduate OR college. The search
yielded 60 studies, and we reviewed all full texts against the inclusion and exclusion
criteria summarized in Table 1. The process resulted in a dataset of 38 studies. After
receiving the first decision by the journal in March 2022, we supplemented the dataset
with more recent studies in light of the rapidly expanding feedback literacy research
base. We repeated the same search in Scopus, which yielded 16 peer-reviewed journal
articles. After another full-text review, 11 of these papers were selected for analysis,
leading to an overall dataset of 49 articles.

Analytic process

The analytic process started with a careful familiarization with the 49 studies. Overall, the
analysis was a dialogic process in which the researchers held repeated meetings to discuss
key articles and concepts. Our approach was to first read the studies in a systematic manner
to gather an overall understanding of the dataset, and then interpret these findings through
the concepts of academic literacies and fabrication.
We started by carefully discussing the origins of feedback literacy (Carless & Boud,
2018; Sutton, 2012). Based on these conversations, we formulated a coding scheme for a

Table 1  Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria

Phenomenon Feedback literacy is the main concept, or Feedback literacy is mentioned but is not one
one of the main concepts, of the article. of the main research objects. The study
The study adds or strengthens new knowl- does not add substantial new knowledge
edge about feedback literacy about feedback literacy
Study Empirical and conceptual full-length studies Short commentaries
Population Higher education, including students and Other sectors of education (e.g., secondary
teachers schools) and contexts beyond education
(e.g., workplace)
Type of Peer-reviewed journal articles, full text Non-peer reviewed studies, studies with no
study available full text, book chapters, reports

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systematic reading of the studies by inductively coding the following information in the
review management system Covidence:

• Definitions and conceptualizations of feedback and feedback literacy;

• Notions about who is, or is not, feedback literate;
• The new contribution put forward;
• Whether the study is empirical or conceptual;
• The methods (e.g., for data collection and analysis) and frameworks used;
• The implications offered for research and practice;
• Any other ideas about feedback literacy.

In the next phase, to address the first research objective, we conducted a theory-driven
analysis of how feedback literacy was conceptualized. We categorized the studies based on
the framework of academic literacies (Lea & Street, 1998, 2006). This means that we ana-
lyzed the studies against this existing framework, determining whether the individual stud-
ies reflected (i) feedback skills as a human attribute, (ii) feedback socialization to various
contexts of feedback, and/or (iii) feedback literacies as understood as discursive construc-
tions amidst the structures of discourse and power in academia. The analysis maintained
inductive principles, meaning that any study can belong to one or more categories. This
choice was made as our interest was not in evaluating individual studies but in understand-
ing feedback literacy research as a whole.
A major focal point of the analysis concerned the fabrication of the feedback literate
individual. The earlier analysis of how feedback literacy was conceptualized informed
this theoretical reading. This analysis drew on a careful reading of the coded data and
the full articles through Popkewitz’s framework of fabrication. Overall, we understood
the research articles as social artifacts with practical consequences: fabrications of feed-
back literacy effect practice through research-based feedback strategies, professional
training, and so forth. The analysis resembled discursive and deconstructive approaches
(see Evans, 2011), aiming to uncover the mechanisms of scientific knowledge produc-
tion processes concerning feedback literacy and the feedback literate student/teacher.
Through critical reading, we deconstructed the intertwined processes of ‘the fiction’
(who is the feedback literate individual?) and ‘the manufacturing’ (how is the feedback
literate individual turned into a research object, something that can be studied and acted
upon?). Following Popkewitz’s notion, we analyzed the fabrications in their contexts
of both higher education and assessment research as above. For example, the tendency
to focus on skills as a form of ‘pedagogization’ (namely, framing broader societal chal-
lenges mainly as a matter of cognition, pedagogy and design) provided a fruitful way
for us to understand the mechanisms of fabrication (see also Ostrowicka, 2022; Wheela-
han et al., 2022).
Being aware that such critical reading is somewhat unconventional in review studies,
we offer multiple examples to enable the reader to appreciate or challenge our thinking.
The findings which follow are not a separate part of our analysis: there is no ‘hidden’
analysis underneath it, but instead we transparently present our interpretations. Impor-
tantly, our analysis does not evaluate the intentions of the original authors or label the
authors as the origins of the fabrications. Instead, the authors are understood as operating
amidst broader discourses in the field. We have conducted the analysis as insiders in the
research field, placing high value on reflexivity given that the dataset included articles by
ourselves and our close collaborators.

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Overview of the dataset

First, we briefly provide descriptive information about the dataset (Table 2). Overall, feed-
back literacy studies mostly focused on student feedback literacy. Twenty-five of the stud-
ies were not discipline-specific, whereas languages and/or writing (e.g., academic writing,
English for Academic Purposes) stood out as an overrepresented context (12 studies).
We further explored the empirical studies (N = 33; Table 3). Overall, the studies were mostly
qualitative, and the quantitative parts in the mixed methods studies drew on relatively simplistic
analyzes (e.g., t-testing), with the exception of two more advanced validation studies for feed-
back literacy scales (Song, 2022; Zhan, 2021a). Interview methods and thematic analysis were
frequently used. Notably, many thematic analyses included somewhat vague elements, such as
identification of ‘categories’ (e.g., Li & Han, 2021) or application of ‘thematic content analysis’
(e.g., Malecka et al., 2022) without further elaboration. Fifteen of 21 qualitative studies were
interpreted to be inductive, namely they did not draw on pre-existing theories or frameworks in
their analysis (Table 3). A handful of studies provided observational data on in situ feedback
literacies (Han & Xu, 2021; Heron et al., 2021; Xu & Carless, 2017). Some studies (e.g., Boud
& Dawson, 2021; Xu & Carless, 2017) were conducted in projects focusing on other aspects of
feedback, and then inferred student or teacher feedback literacy from the data, rather than starting
out with the goal of collecting data on feedback literacy.

How was feedback literacy conceptualized?

39/49 studies addressed feedback literacy as trainable skills (e.g., Boud & Dawson, 2021; Win-
stone et al., 2019). These studies understood feedback literacy as an internal psychological con-
struct that could be studied through human thinking and behavior, thus reflecting the approaches
of educational psychology and psychometrics (e.g., Song, 2022; Zhan, 2021a). Following Lea
and Street’s conceptualization, these studies were suggestive of the ‘deficit model’ as they focused
on increasing students’ and teachers’ lacking feedback literacies. Moreover, through the skills
approach, feedback literacy could be ‘broken down’ to atomized skills and capabilities.
17/49 studies reflected feedback socialization: acculturation of students and teachers within
disciplinary or national feedback cultures (e.g. Han & Xu, 2020; Rovagnati et al., 2022).
Feedback literacy was now seen as an important subset of academic cultures. These studies
depicted how contexts shape feedback literacy, and how institutional practices could support
students’ integration to new feedback cultures and practices.
Finally, 5/49 studies addressed feedback literacies (e.g., Gravett, 2022; Tai et al., 2021).
These studies did not only understand feedback literacy through a social epistemology but

Table 2  Descriptive information about the dataset (N = 49). Frequencies in brackets

Discipline Whose feedback literacy? Type of study

• General/multiple disciplines (24) • Students (38) • Empirical (33)

• Languages and/or writing (12) • Teachers (7) • Conceptual (16)
• Psychology, education, and social sciences (6) • Both (4)
• Medical education (3)
• Business and management (2)
• STEM (1)
• Unclear (1)

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Table 3  Research methodologies in empirical studies (N = 33). If multiple methods were used, each of them
is categorized separately
Qualitative (21) Mixed methods (10) Quantitative (2)

Datasets • Interviews (16) • Interviews (6) • Quantitative instru-

• Feedback comments (e.g., • Quantitative survey (5) ment for feedback
teacher feedback, peer • Feedback comments (e.g., literacy (2)
feedback) (6) teacher feedback, peer
• Student work (4) feedback) (4)
• Qualitative survey (4) • Other feedback materials
• Classroom observation (4) (e.g., reflective journals,
• Documents (4) cover sheets) (4)
• Other feedback materials • Qualitative survey (3)
(e.g., reflective journals, • Student work (2)
cover sheets) (3) • Classroom observation (1)
• Recorded lectures/ses- • Teacher reflection (1)
sions (2) • Recorded lectures/ses-
• Teacher reflection (1) sions (1)
• Online discussions (1)
Analysis methods Types of methods: Qualitative: • Rasch modeling (1)
• Thematic analysis (15) • Thematic analysis (4) • Factor analyses (1)
• Unclear/not mentioned/ • Coding (4)
unclear combination of • Unclear/not mentioned (2)
methods without explana- Quantitative:
tion (8) • Descriptive data (e.g.,
• Content analysis (3) reporting means and
• Coding (distinct from standard deviations) (9)
thematic analysis) (2) • Comparative tests (Wil-
• Critical discourse analysis coxon Z, paired t-tests,
(1) Mann–Whitney test,
• Text analysis (1) ANOVA) (3)
• Narrative analysis (1)
Inductive or deductive?
• Inductive (15)
• Deductive (3)
• Unclear (3)

as something socially constructed through power and discourse. The approach to scientific
knowledge production was critical-transformative, as these studies aimed to challenge the
individualistic understandings of feedback literacy (e.g., Nieminen et al., 2022b).

Fabrications of the feedback literate student/teacher

In this section, we introduce two fabrications: the one of a feedback literate student/teacher
as a psychologically capable individual, and the one of a feedback literate student/teacher as
a complex, contextual and social being. These fabrications are highly contrasting, providing
two substantially different approaches to understanding feedback literate individuals.

The psychologically capable individual

This first fabrication shifts the responsibility in feedback by offering a novel way of
understanding feedback processes. Traditionally, feedback research has emphasized

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feedback practices, but feedback literacy research contributes by developing individu-

als’ skills and capabilities. This fabrication aligns with the conceptualization of feed-
back literacy as a psychological construct that can be measured, tracked and developed,
thus aligning with what Lea & Street (1998) call ‘a deficit model’. A deficit model, in
the words of Lea and Street, suggests a need for students and teachers with insufficient
feedback literacies to undergo interventions for enhancement purposes.
The systemic issues of feedback are now understood from the viewpoint of individuals’
internal states and capabilities. Feedback literacy offers potential to “address problems in
current feedback practice” (Malecka et al., 2020 p. 1) exactly through this idea of indi-
vidualization. As Dawson et al. (2021) put it, this has led to a “shift in the unit of analysis”
to understand “whether learners are well-equipped to participate productively and how
they can be supported better” (p. 286). Student feedback literacy is framed as an important
graduate skillset that students can utilize in their future life (Winstone et al., 2022a; Yan &
Carless, 2021). Similarly, teacher feedback literacy is framed as a certain set of skills that
aim to foster students’ feedback literacies (Carless & Winstone, 2020).
This fabrication relies on a conceptualization of feedback as a pedagogical phenomenon.
Through this pedagogical lens, feedback is seen as something that could be designed; that the
interactions between students and teachers could be planned and managed. Such an emphasis
on pedagogical design is clearly seen in how feedback literacy is linked to the new paradigm
of feedback (e.g., de Kleijn, 2021; Xiang et al., 2021). The studies largely revealed feedback
as a pedagogical tool to enhance the quality of students’ work or learning strategies (Hoo
et al., 2021) and to maximize potential learning benefits for all parties (Hey-Cunningham
et al., 2021). Even small units of interaction were seen as something to be designed. An
example of this is how talk was ‘pedagogized’ by framing classroom discussions as a form of
dialogic feedback. A feedback literate teacher designs the “moment-by-moment exchanges in
classrooms” (Heron et al., 2021, p. 1) to make their students aware of the learning possibili-
ties in the micro-moments of interaction. Similarly, meta-dialogues (Banister, 2020; Carless
& Boud, 2018), social processes in students’ zone of proximal development (de Kleijn, 2021)
and social-affective support “involving acts that build up students’ trust in teacher and peers”
(Xu & Carless, 2017, p. 1090) were described as something ‘designable’. Similarly, students’
internal feedback and capacities to make judgments were framed through the idea of peda-
gogical design (Carless & Boud, 2018). A key teacher responsibility, then, is to design oppor-
tunities for students to develop their feedback literacy.
Through such reframing, the responsibility to tackle the institutional issues of feedback
is grounded at the level of individual students’ and teachers’ psycho-social development.
Responsibilities for feedback processes are accordingly shifted towards individuals. In turn,
the solutions for the structural challenges of feedback such as large numbers of students
and modest resourcing are also mainly mitigated by resourceful students and teachers. In
fact, feedback literate students were described as thriving despite limited resources: “One
of the clear advantages of having feedback literate students is that they are not depend-
ent on the necessarily limited opportunities (resources, time, class size) for input on their
work from staff.” (Molloy et al., 2020, p. 537–538) The message is invariably positive: it
is possible to design productive feedback processes even in mass higher education settings.
Digital affordances were central in such large-scale design processes in facilitating peer
feedback (e.g., Wood, 2020, 2022). Such reframing of feedback places social, historical,
cultural and political aspects of feedback in the margins. For example, Carless and Boud
(2018) mentioned the “common discourses of students as consumers” that might “reinforce
instrumental attitudes” (p. 1317) and hinder the development of feedback literacy, yet feed-
back literacy was still framed as a matter of pedagogy, design, and competencies.

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This fabrication reflects Popkewitz’s (2008a, 2008b, 2013) earlier analyses of mod-
ern students, fabricated as rational, self-regulated individuals who ideally manage their
actions, thoughts and affects. Our analysis places feedback literacy research in the histori-
cal continuum of educational research that has tended to frame skill development as the
main focus of education as “discrete, disembodied entities that can be observed, counted
and added in different ways” (Wheelahan et al., 2022, 14). Feedback literacy offers novel
expert knowledge for people to understand themselves as learners with skills and capabili-
ties to “evaluate and use feedback, and to self-regulate cognitive and affective reactions”
(Arts et al., 2021p. 2; see also Yu & Liu, 2021, p. 1–2). As a skill, feedback literacy can
now be measured, tracked, and developed. Again, the message is positive, as “feedback
illiterate” (Chong, 2021 p. 93) people, those with an insufficient level of feedback literacy,
are invited to make use of pedagogical practices that develop their feedback literacy.
Indeed, feedback literacy interventions in our dataset were not about compulsion but about
steering people towards a certain ideal. Some studies called for dialogic approaches to develop-
ing feedback literacies through “guidance, coaching and modelling” (Carless & Boud, 2018,
p. 1321), and interview data evidenced an “awakening” where students “now understood they
could play an active role in feedback” (Noble et al., 2020, p. 63). Characteristics of who is feed-
back literate included notions such as “commitment”, “appreciation” and “acknowledgement”
of feedback as an active process (Molloy et al., 2020), as well as “maturation” (Hoo et al., 2021,
p. 192). These notions emphasize that learners are not compelled to become feedback literate,
but they should be made aware of its benefits so that they want it themselves. Tools for this
were provided through, for example, progressive use of self-assessment, peer feedback cycles,
e-portfolios, and reflective journals. However, as Wheelahan et al. (2022) aptly put it, “the actor
who invests in their skill development is premised on a particular conception of human beings”
(p. 13). In this case, the psychologically capable, feedback literate individual might come to
internalize the broader values of performativity and individualism that assessment often builds
on in higher education (see Broadfoot, 1998; Tannock, 2017).
What needs to be specifically mentioned are the two published quantitative scales for feed-
back literacy (Song, 2022; Zhan, 2021a). Before these scales were published, the earlier feed-
back literacy studies largely called for such objective measures: “future research […] would
benefit substantially from the development of a reliable and well-validated measure of feedback
literacy” (Winstone et al., 2019, p. 10). These studies ground feedback literacy more firmly in
educational psychology and psychometrics. Song (2022) argues that previous theories of feed-
back literacy “provide inadequate guidance in explaining and distilling the specific relevant
psychological variables underpinning […] feedback literacy”, calling for further quantitative
empirical data focusing on psychological attributes of feedback literacy. Both scale develop-
ment studies frame psychometrics as a crucially important tool for developing feedback prac-
tices in higher education. The studies provide the research community novel ways for knowing
teachers and students through the measurable, internal features of feedback literacy. The scales
include factors such as trust and self-efficacy (Song, 2022) and appreciation and commitment
to feedback (Zhan, 2021a) as conceptual elements of feedback literacy, emphasizing again that
feedback literacy stems from individuals’ own willingness to commit to such academic values,
and that such values should without question be seen as something desirable.

The socio‑culturally situated individual

Another fabrication was analyzed based on those 20 studies in which feedback literacy
was conceptualized either through feedback socialization and/or literacy. Several of these

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studies explicitly challenged the individualistic takes on feedback literacy and the “agentic,
context-free, neoliberal, individual” (Gravett, 2022, p. 264) fabrication they entailed. These
studies took a substantially different epistemic and ontic stance toward the feedback literate
student/teacher by fabricating this individual as a contextual, situated and communal being.
Through a social epistemology, feedback literacy was not seen to reside in individuals but
in communities and in their interactions, such as between teachers and students in certain
disciplines (Carless & Winstone, 2020).
Feedback literacy itself was, then, understood not as a psychological feature of indi-
viduals but as a complex and messy phenomenon that only took its shape in its contexts
as an “open, emergent, and situated system” (Han & Xu, 2021). Notably, Chong (2021)
formulated an ecological, sociocultural model to understand not only the individual but
the contextual aspects of feedback literacy, seeing feedback itself as a “situated, culturally
embedded, socially mediated practice” (p. 93). The situated nature of feedback literacy was
evident as it was conceptualized differently across disciplines (Li & Han, 2021; Winstone
et al., 2022a), course contexts (Malecka et al., 2022) and national cultures (Rovagnati et al.,
2022). For example, Esterhazy et al. (2021) show how teachers, rather than possessing
feedback literacy, perform feedback literacy “in interaction with their environment” (p. 2).
Similarly, Malecka et al. (2020, p. 4) state that feedback literacy “is not domain independ-
ent because when there is a substantial change in subject matter or mode of knowledge
representation, it needs to be learned anew.” Some contexts were deemed more complex
than others: “it is imperative to explore learner feedback literacy in complex and unpredict-
able environments, such as workplaces, if it is to optimize learning.” (Noble et al., 2020,
p. 58). Several studies explicitly used the plural, feedback literacies to denote the situated
complexity and intertwinement of the concept with its contexts (e.g., Gravett, 2022).
These studies resisted the fabrication of a feedback illiterate individual in need of an
intervention. For example, Rovagnati & Pitt (2021) reinforce a position that overemphasis
on the ideal of Western rationality might exclude people from other cultural backgrounds.
Highly motivated, academically strong (Wei et al., 2020) and proactive, ambitious (Car-
less, 2019) students were seen as ideal for the development of feedback literacy; yet critical
research has shown how such features are not equally distributed but instead are deeply
gendered and racialized, amongst other factors. Pitt et al. (2019) discuss feedback liter-
acy of low achievers, or “those students who are already bewildered” (p. 3). For example,
first generation students might lack the resources to develop feedback literacy which might
indeed result in low achievement. This second fabrication resisted the idea that such issues
should be tackled through individual skill development but instead as a matter of culture
and educational policy. Perhaps the underdeveloped feedback literacies of “low achievers”
can be read in the light of policies governing access and support in higher education.
This view was further strengthened in the two studies that took a sociomaterial approach
toward feedback literacies (deliberately in plural form), highlighting the complex, multi-
faceted nature of the feedback literate individual. Gravett (2022) challenges earlier concep-
tualizations that not only place responsibility upon individuals but overemphasize human
agency in feedback. The sociomaterial approach considers the distribution of agency in
feedback between various human and non-human actors, such as tools, artifacts and the
digital. Similar perspective is taken by Tai et al. (2021) who reframe the feedback liter-
ate individual by discussing entangled, embodied teacher-learner feedback literacies. Such
entangled students and teachers are placed within “institutional structures and power rela-
tions” (p. 3) that frame the fluid and emergent forms of feedback literacies. These two
papers resonate with the roots of feedback literacy as discussed through power and dis-
course by Sutton (2012).

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What to make of such complexity? As Tai et al. (2021) put it: “this level of uncertainty
might feel daunting and chaotic” (p. 10). When sociomaterial complexity is emphasized,
the idea in feedback literacy research that the individual is in the center of the feedback
process seems to be downplayed. As feedback literacy reaches beyond humans and instead
focuses on “all that is external to the individual” (Rovagnati et al., 2022, p. 348) the focus
of research shifts from internal feedback to the structures of feedback themselves. While
sociocultural approaches still center the individual, post-humanist approaches return inter-
actions and relationships to the main focus of research. The dangers of individualism are
avoided, but as feedback literacy is seen as something fluid—as a research object that is
constantly re-shifting with and through tools, artifacts, structures and power relations—one
is left to ponder: what is the explanatory power of feedback literacy over simply feedback
with all its dialogic, social, and relational aspects? What does the concept add to scientific
discussions that existing, critical terms (e.g., agency and power) could not address?

Discussion

Feedback literacy research has emerged and bloomed rapidly: we have analyzed the first
49 studies published on this concept in higher education literature. We have discussed how
feedback research literature has been rather eclectic since its very beginning, allowing mul-
tiple viewpoints and approaches. The 49 studies included approaches spanning from psy-
chometrics to practically oriented classroom implementations, all the way up to critical
investigations. Feedback literacy research, then, stands in an interesting position amidst the
broader field of assessment and feedback research. First, it is grounded firmly in higher
education literature in which it originated (see Lipnevich & Panadero, 2021). On the one
hand, feedback skill literature draws on the post-positivist roots of assessment research that
rely on the idea of assessment as measurement of individuals. On the other hand, feedback
socialization and literacy approaches have explicitly challenged this ‘modernist discourse’
of assessment (Broadfoot, 1998). Accordingly, our analysis sheds light on two varying fab-
rications of the feedback literate individual. Both fabrications, in their own ways, intro-
duce feedback literacy as a novel way to address the systemic issues of feedback in higher
education.
In this final section, we discuss our analysis from the viewpoint of reflexivity. Reflexive
research fields and subfields engage in critical reflection of their goals and underpinnings,
recognizing quality in individual studies but also within the field itself. Reflexive fields
also recognize their positioning in relation to other fields, fostering connections and syner-
gies and avoiding siloing (see Nieminen et al., 2022b). Reflexive fields reach toward the
future, which is why we ask: where might feedback literacy research go from here?

Reflexively defining the boundaries of feedback literacy

Given the multiple ways feedback literacy is conceptualized, we first discuss definitional
clarity and consistency. Now is an appropriate time for the research community to consider
whether various, and even conflicting, approaches to feedback literacy can be reconciled. We
believe that they probably cannot as they represent incongruent ideas of learning, scientific
inquiry, and indeed feedback. Drawing on different concepts (such as skills, socialization and
literacies) could enable researchers to address the multifaceted nature of feedback literacy. We

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have suggested that Lea and Street’s framework holds promise for this quest, but we also wel-
come other perhaps more nuanced conceptualizations. With a precise and consistent use of
terminology, researchers could address whether feedback literacy is a psychological construct
that remains similar within different contexts (skills and capabilities), or whether it takes its
specific shape in various contexts and disciplines (socialization), or whether it mainly mani-
fests through discourse and power (literacies). The plural form, feedback literacies, could be
used explicitly to denote the entanglement of feedback literacies between and within different
human and non-human actors. We especially problematize the non-reflexive use of ‘literacy’
in psychologically oriented studies: if this term is used, what are its advantages and disadvan-
tages over ‘skills’ and ‘competencies’? The psychometric studies included factors such as self-
efficacy (Song, 2022) and commitment (Zhan, 2021a) to denote ‘literacy’, which, even from a
purely psychometric point of view, warrants further critical investigation.
We are reminded of Vincent’s essay on ‘literacy literacy’ in which he argued that the concept of
literacy has been overused without justification and attached to too many disparate practices: “We
have more and more literacies” (Vincent, 2003, p. 341). Is feedback literacy a literacy? Perhaps the
answer to this question might be found by exploring the boundaries between feedback literacy and
other similar concepts. For example, if feedback literacy is understood as a psychological construct,
how does it differ from concepts such as ‘self-assessment skills’ and ‘evaluative judgment’—or,
more broadly, from interpersonal skills or communication skills? Might feedback literacy be a man-
ifestation of self-regulation in the specific context of educational feedback? There is a lot to learn
from Joughin et al. (2021) who explored the conceptual boundaries, overlaps and contradictions
between ‘feedback literacy’ and ‘feedback seeking’. Furthermore, the corollary of feedback literacy
should be explored: what is feedback literacy not? For example, one could ask that as humans pro-
cess information continuously from their environment, when are they not using feedback literacy?
While reaching towards greater reflexivity, future feedback literacy research would benefit
from interdisciplinary approaches. For example, feedback literacy has been scarcely connected
with multiple other overlapping literacies such as assessment literacy, digital literacy, infor-
mation literacy, or data literacy—or indeed literacy! Lessons might be learned from digital
literacy research (e.g., Pangrazio & Selwyn, 2019) that has emphasized how ‘literacy’ is not
only about mastering certain digital skills but about using those skills creatively and critically
to build better digital futures. If given meaningful opportunities, what might feedback literate
students do with feedback?

Reframing the feedback literate individual as a critical agent

Our analysis has unpacked the fabrication of the feedback literate student/teacher, or, the
conceptual shift from feedback as an external input to feedback literacy as capacities resid-
ing within the individual. The concept has been developed with the aim of contributing to
the enhancement of the quality of feedback practices, a goal widely supported in higher
education. Through Popkewitz’s sociological tools, however, we have unearthed potential
downsides of the ‘individualization’ that feedback literacy builds on: how feedback literacy
enables novel tools for explaining the systemic, economic issues of student–teacher inter-
action in higher education (Bunce et al., 2017; Winstone, Ajjawi, et al., 2021; Winstone,
Bourne, et al., 2021) in pedagogical terms by focusing on skills, competencies, psychology
and pedagogical design (see Ostrowicka, 2022). Feedback literacy, as opposed to related
concepts such as student engagement with feedback, relies on this modern fabrication that
allows feedback to be explored and worked on through the means of individual skill devel-
opment (Wheelahan et al., 2022).

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As many studies in our dataset noted, feedback literacy interventions offer empowering
tools for learning for students and teachers alike. If carefully facilitated, such interventions
could challenge the structural inequities in higher education by enabling all people an access
to those skills, techniques, and socially regarded practices referred to as feedback literacy.
Feedback literacy interventions hold the promise of promoting the purpose of higher educa-
tion by enabling “lifelong learning in an uncertain future” (Dawson et al., 2021, p. 295) for
all learners. At the same time, an overemphasis on feedback literacy as an individual grad-
uate skillset might further reinforce the ideologies of marketization and individualism in
higher education. Through its ‘soft power’, feedback literacy does not support these ideals
through force, but through ‘appreciation,’ ‘commitment,’ and ‘maturation.’ As feedback lit-
eracy research seems to be taking a step toward the quantitative research paradigm through
recently published scales, it is worth asking whether, and how, this possible future trend in
research addresses the broader socio-political landscapes of higher education.
Following the critically oriented studies in our dataset (e.g., Gravett, 2022), we call for
reframing the feedback literate individual not as a psychological or social being but as a criti-
cal and political actor. This conceptualization builds on the ecological model of feedback
literacy (see Chong, 2021) while shifting the view from understanding feedback literate peo-
ple within their contexts into understanding how feedback literate people change their con-
texts. We thus recommend feedback literacy research to reach beyond social epistemologies
toward critical-transformative ones (see Nieminen et al., 2022a). Given that “feedback litera-
cies might not just be about reading the world, but also about editing or rewriting what is
possible in feedback” (Tai et al., 2021, p. 7; original emphasis), in given contexts, a feedback
literate teacher might indeed need to reshape the existing status quo rather than complement
it. Critical approaches could unpack what feedback literate students and teachers do in higher
education contexts where new paradigm feedback practices are likely to founder. Might feed-
back literate individuals be the ones who rewrite the world and use feedback for the purposes
of common good and social justice? Importantly, reframing feedback literacy as a critical
research object is not a neutral task but requires feedback scholars to take part in broader
socio-political discussions about the role of feedback in neoliberal mass higher education.
Currently, the field of feedback research produces considerable amounts of practically
oriented knowledge. If debates about feedback predominantly stay within the level of
design and pedagogy, no matter how complex and relational, there is a risk of overlooking
broader movements in educational policies and ideologies (Biesta, 2009; Nieminen et al.,
2022a). Perhaps, for example, the previously-reported issues of feedback (e.g., large class
sizes) might not, in fact, be issues about solely feedback at all, but instead symptoms of the
broader socio-political shifts in higher education (see Marginson, 2016). The expanding
mass higher education system profoundly challenges student–teacher interactions, which
sets well-reported barriers for feedback dialogues. As the purpose of higher education in
many national contexts seems to shift toward employability and marketization, assessment
risks emphasizing performativity and comparability. Policy- and sociology-oriented per-
spectives might be needed to unpack how student and teacher feedback literacies unfold in
such contexts. Feedback literacy offers novel solutions and indeed a novel reframing of the
problems related to feedback, but only if used reflexively. In non-reflexive hands, feedback
literacy could end up being a tool for holding individual students and teachers accountable
for the structural issues and inequities of higher education. For example, rather than criti-
cally striving for systemic change in feedback practices and policies, research might end
up expecting feedback literate students to be mainly responsible for seeking and generat-
ing their own feedback. Feedback literacy offers potential for more sustainable futures of
higher education—if used reflexively.

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Methodological implications

We have called for reflexivity in how ‘the feedback literate individual’ is constructed
through research. Several methodological implications arise from our analysis.
In terms of qualitative research, we call for more sophisticated methodologies beyond rela-
tively simplistic analyzes; and reflexive alignment between one’s epistemic and ontic premises
regarding the conceptualization of feedback literacy, data collection and analysis methods. We
are critical toward further inductive analyzes (e.g., thematic analyzes), as there is a danger of
reinventing the wheel. Particular potential for future qualitative research is offered by socioma-
terialism. Well-recognized existing frameworks such as Cultural Historical Activity Theory and
Actor Network Theory could inform data collection and analysis methods, widening our empiri-
cal understanding of how feedback literacies are constructed between human and non-human
actors. These frameworks might shed light on the digitally mediated aspects of feedback literacy.
For example, how do feedback literate students and teachers operate in the digital world, and
how is feedback literacy divided between human actors and technology? The promising idea of
shared feedback literacy between students and teachers (Carless & Winstone, 2020) might be
studied through communal rather than individualistic epistemologies. Qualitative approaches
could unpack how students and teachers co-perform feedback literacy (see Esterhazy et al., 2021)
in various disciplinary contexts. Future research could explore the epistemic nuances of feedback
and feedback literacy in disciplines with varying conceptions of knowledge and learning. How
does feedback literacy take shape in disciplines with a relational idea of knowledge standards
such as creative arts (see Pitt & Carless, 2021) as opposed to positivist disciplines with correct
or incorrect procedures and answers (cf. corrective feedback)? Finally, participatory co-design
methodologies present interesting opportunities for feedback literacy research. Students and
teachers could be seen as agentic co-researchers who can use and develop their feedback litera-
cies together with the researchers, instead of seeing participants merely as the objects of research.
Quantitative studies would also benefit from reflexivity: we note the dangers of unre-
flexive empiricism. Many studies in our datasets called for quantitative instruments without
further justification. Perhaps it is assumed that the evolution of any educational concept
benefits from quantification? Currently, there is little theoretical elaboration on whether
feedback literacy is a measurable, psychological construct, other than arguing rather cycli-
cally that psychometrics offers a “systematic and quantitative way” to study feedback lit-
eracy (Zhan, 2021a, p. 2). If feedback literacy is considered to be a construct, we call for
further theoretical investigations of its dimensions. We offer two specific lines of quantita-
tive research we see helpful for understanding the feedback literate individual. First, the
same instruments could be used in higher education and the workplace to unpack whether
this psychological construct remains stable in various contexts. Second, longitudinal stud-
ies could track the development of feedback literacy over one’s studies or career to unpack
its development, and its interplay and interconnections with other psychological constructs.
Longitudinal studies would be especially helpful to unpack transitions from the viewpoint
of feedback literacy, such as during one’s transition to the workplace.

Final words

Feedback literacy is a powerful idea that, if used carefully, carries potential for reimagining
feedback in higher education. When well-managed, feedback processes involving comple-
mentary participation from students and teachers are a significant element in fulfilling the

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very purpose of higher education. We invite feedback researchers to reflect critically on the
contribution of feedback literacy amidst the broader political landscapes of higher educa-
tion. Whether the idea of feedback literacy aims to challenge or complement such land-
scapes remains a crucial question for the feedback research field to reflect on.

Acknowledgements We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Karen Gravett and Dr. Zi Yan
for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Their feedback literacies were vital
for sharpening our argumentation.

Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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