Making Student Voice Heard in Dialogic Feedback: Feedback Design Matters

Jessica To^1*Dominique Aluquin²Kelvin Heng Kiat Tan³

• ¹The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
• ²SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute, Singapore, Singapore
• ³National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

Making student voice heard is crucial for productive feedback. However, this is seldom in practice in the exam-oriented context because students lack opportunities and support to give voice in feedback processes. To bridge the gap, this collaborative actionparticipatory research explored how feedback could be redesigned to invite student voice in a Singapore secondary school. We collaborated with three Social Studies teachers to transform their error-focused practice into dialogic feedback accentuating student voice. Drawing on the Lundy model of participation and self-determination theory, the teachers designed a feedback log to let was designed to document the voice of 48 secondary four (equivalent to Grade 10) learners articulate their voice and psychological needs for competence and relatedness. in feedback interaction. Analysis of feedback logs, student focus groups and teacher interviews indicated three main aspects of student voice: (i) grades (numeric feedback) as an indicator to monitor one's goal achievement and exam preparation efforts; (ii) challenges in making feedforward; and (iii) learners' feedback engagement and motivation largely shaped by teacher response. Given the context-dependent nature of tasks in Social Studies, verbal reciprocal exchange would be useful in developing students' higher-order thinking skills for feedforward. that the students were eager to articulate task goals, self-reflections and post-task emotions but hesitant to express feedback understanding and make improvement suggestions. Inferred from the findings, the feedback log could give students autonomy to express their competence and relational needs, but the verbal reciprocal exchange between students and teachers is crucial to fulfill their needs and to develop their cognitive skills for making feed-forward. Implications for productive feedback designs are discussed, and avenues for future research outlined.