ABSTRACT
The re-conceptualisation of feedback envisaged in this volume takes at its heart a dialogic approach to feedback. Dialogue is more than conversation or exchange of ideas, it involves relationships in which participants think and reason together (Gravett and Petersen 2002). Dialogic feedback is defined as interactive exchanges in which interpretations are shared, meanings negotiated and expectations clarified. It seeks to provide opportunities for students to interact around notions of quality and standards in the discipline. Without an evolving understanding of quality, it is difficult for students to make sense of comments on their work and improve performance;and in such cases feedback becomes unproductive and unsustainable. The emphasis on dialogue is an explicit attempt to address the limitations of those forms of feedback that are largely one-way transmissive processes. These uni-directional modes of feedback largely arise because of the institutional constraint of written feedback on end of course assignments. Generating dialogue thus requires some re-engineering of the feedback process.
