Understanding the Landscape of Feedback: The Message Implementation Student Context Agents Model

• In Event: Got Feedback? New Perspective, Practices, and Possibilities for Revitalizing Inquiry Into Assessment for Learning

Abstract

Feedback is a complex phenomenon. For decades educational researchers have worked on topics such as how to define it or which variables may relate to students’ use of it. A significant number of models has been proposed describing various types of feedback along with mechanisms through which feedback may improve student performance and learning.
In this presentation we will report results of a systematic review, which culminated in a development of an integrative model. To this end, we used a three-step approach to select the most relevant models. First, we consulted our personal reference library and identified ten models. Second, we consulted thirty-eight international experts via email asking them to identify the feedback models they knew of. These experts suggested sixty-five models including the ten identified in the previous step. Third, based on the two previous reviews on feedback models (Mory, 2004; Shute, 2008), two new models were added for a total of sixty-seven. To select the final models we used two criteria. First, we included the models discussed in Mory (2004) and Shute (2008) and, second, we selected models that were voted by three or more experts.
The final list comprised fourteen publications and we performed the following analyses: (1) we described the models in detail, (2) compared their proposed definitions, taxonomies, thematic areas, etc., and (3) integrated their shared elements into a new comprehensive model, expanding the model to include the current developments in the field of feedback.
As a result of our synthesis, we offered an expanded typology of feedback and a classification of models into five thematic areas: descriptive, internal processing, interactional, pedagogical, and students characteristics. We concluded with an Integrative Model of Feedback Elements that includes five components: Message, Implementation, Student, Context, and Agents (MISCA). Our model emphasizes the centrality of the student in the feedback process, while integrating all the elements that configure the feedback phenomenon. We described each element and relations –some bidirectional others unidirectional- among them, offering future directions for theory and practice. The model depicts the complexity of feedback: the conditions that affect the success of feedback implementation and use are multiple and account for a wide variability of results.
Our hope is that our model creates an ample framework from which to conduct feedback research and interventions as it integrates the previous models and proposes ways to move our field forward. We believe the scientific community needs to find a balance between having to “reinvent the wheel” in each new model and remembering that researchers are and should “stand on the shoulders of giants”. In the end, our ultimate purpose is to inform the field and to help both scholars and educators to select appropriate models to frame their research and intervention development.

Authors

• Ernesto Panadero, Dublin City University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anastasiya A. Lipnevich, Queens College - CUNY
  Presenting Author