2024/12/04 by Martina van Heerden, Sharita Bharuthram · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · #Student Assessment and Feedback #Reflective Practices in Education #Evaluation and Performance Assessment
paper · doi:10.1080/14703297.2024.2437114
openalex publication_date 2024/12/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/20
The concept of ‘useful feedback’ is often used in the literature and practice without fully acknowledging the many (and sometimes conflicting) meanings embedded in it. This conceptual paper, using the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimension of Semantics, aims to unpack the complexity within the idea of ‘useful feedback’ to improve the feedback dialogue between staff and students. In this paper, we organise the notion of ‘useful’ around five central nodes, namely the purpose of feedback, the characteristics of feedback, the implementability of feedback, the feedback giver, and the feedback receiver. A Feedback Usefulness Tool is presented that may be used to further feedback conversations, training, and research, and highlights that ‘useful feedback’ may be contextual, complex, and contradictory.