4.2.2 Feedback

“Constructive alignment” tell us that the curriculum, its outcomes, the learning activities (teaching methods) and assessment activities all need be aligned to each other. It highlights the need for consistency in each of the different aspects of the curriculum, including in the enacted curriculum (curriculum as it is taught). Thus, when considering assessment, curriculum designers and facilitators need to ensure all forms of assessment (formative [assessment for learning], summative [assessment of learning] and sustainable [inclusive of assessment as learning]) align with the learning outcomes/competencies and the learning activities.

4.2.2 Feedback

Feedback is an integral part of the learning process where learners are engaged in understanding how they could improve, and the strategies for moving forward. Feedback on assessment, when well designed and delivered in a timely manner, could contribute to improvement in subsequent performance. One of the main purposes of feedback is to reduce the gap between current performance and desired goal, and it requires the instructor to provide clarity about the goals, develop appropriate challenges and specific goals, and assist learners in achieving those goals. Effective feedback also promotes learner’s self-understanding, -evaluation and -regulation, and strategies such as peer- and selfassessment are commonly used in the process. Effective feedback addresses three main questions: “where am I going?” (feed up), “how am I doing?” (feedback), and “where to next?” (feed forward), and all these are not separate but “necessary characteristics” of feedback (Boud & Molloy, 2012).

Some feedback strategies include the development of (new) feedback models (Boud & Molloy, 2013), and rethinking notions of feedback beyond its role as giving information to learners “but as a coproductive process in which both students and others have key roles to play” (Boud & Soler, 2016, p. 4). Our findings show that feedback is inherently dynamic and co-productive, and we shall examine in detail the ways feedback is used and implemented in some of the cases.

In the F&B menu-change training, there are three different but intertwined purposes (of assessment) that shape what kind of feedback is given and if it is to be given at all. The three purposes are to enable accountability and compliance with company regulations; to help or enable workers improve and/or become better in their job; and the notion of “loss” of know-how and investments made in learning/training when a trained staff leaves the company. In this case, feedback might be used to communicate (to employees) the desired behaviour and corresponding rewards for performance and/or compliance, and it could also be used for learning.

In a cooking/learning session, we found feedback provided by the development chef (instructorassessor) to be immediate and directed towards helping the cooks (learners) improve their techniques. The development chef coached the cooks by closely observing, correcting and reminding them on the spot as they were cooking, and sometimes by redemonstrating certain steps and techniques that the cooks might have done incorrectly.

The nature of feedback in the F&B menu-change training is mainly corrective – addressing techniques and specific actions – rather than explanatory. This type of feedback may be limiting in a way: learners, especially novices, may know what to do but do not necessarily understand what they are doing or realise the impact and consequence of their actions. The way current assessment has been designed is such that feedback is triggered by mistakes the learners make, and the feedback only addresses immediate and visible errors and/or actions. Any “deep knowing” could only come with further practice and experience in the restaurant kitchen, and the onus is on cooks/learners to seek feedback rather than the instructors or assessors or peers to construct and provide feedback.

Findings also show that there are multiple sources of feedback; many opportunities to give and receive feedback; and different ways to give feedback, including face to face, group and IT-enabled. In the

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aircraft engineering programme, the students’ activity of building an electric circuit provided plentiful opportunities for feedback. The instructor engages students in a continuous process of questioning that leads to their own further investigation and eventual discovery of the solutions. The instructor uses questioning and prompts to assist students in tracing their steps/procedures and lines of thought/thinking, and to get them to think analytically. Here, instructors probe students by asking questions like which “component is not working?”, or “why is it not working – is the component faulty or is the connection made wrongly?” . The students are required to repeatedly demonstrate the assembled circuit to the instructor, and they are encouraged to investigate, identify and rectify the problems.

Students receive continuous feedback from the instructor through their demonstration of the assembled circuit and the questioning process, and also from the worksheets, components and instruments. Students use multiple avenues to gain feedback: checking the worksheet instructions and schematic diagram, using the testing instrument to gather readings (or null readings), observing the components (e.g. an LED light), and engaging with the instructor. Observing, participating, experimenting and talking are crucial for students to complete the tasks and enable feedback. The multiple avenues for obtaining feedback constitute important features or characteristics of formative assessment. They also demonstrate what Vygotsky argued –“that a similar sort of dialogue can take place when one is alone, using the resources appropriated from engaging in dialogue with others” (Wells, 2000, p. 70).

The findings suggest that the quality of feedback/dialogue is not dependent on the number of persons, or the spread and/or variety of feedback sources. The key elements of good feedback/dialogue are “responsivity” and “the attempt to achieve enhanced understanding” in which “a structure of meaning is built up collaboratively over successive turns” (ibid, p. 16). This is demonstrated in more open-ended learning environments like the workplace learning programme, where affordances for engagement with multiple stakeholders and discourse via different perspectives enable learners to discuss and analyse issues which contribute to greater clarity about the different perspectives, the language used within them and their implications. In the process, a framework for making such judgements is being developed over time. For example, awareness of the different language brought about by different perspectives, what the ideas are behind that language and the implications of each perspective (discussed in the section on alignment) are three aspects of a potential framework or heuristic for thinking like a workplace facilitator and thus for “becoming”.

Feedback can be understood and engendered as “communication” writ large: it is not limited to humanto-human dialogue but incorporates interaction with texts, artefacts, devices and so on, which together constitute a “structure of meaning” (Wells, 2000, p. 16) or network that maps both material (between things) and semiotic (between concepts) relations (see also Fischer, 2005). Feedback (theorised) as communication gives recognition to the different “modes of knowing” (Wells, 2000, p. 19) and the methods through which these modes are “best” enabled. This is illustrated as follows:

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