ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the views of some pupils who struggle to achieve in classrooms in England. It seeks to present their understandings of learning and feedback in order to tease out their priorities and thoughts about their learning. The chapter is a deliberate attempt to present the ways in which pupils make sense of and enact the feedback they are offered. It particularly seeks to make sense of the way in which pupils construct and control their own learning gap. Furthermore, the highlights how many of the pupils have not aligned their thinking in the ways that their teachers have expected. This highlights a range of insights about feedback, and challenges existing assumptions which require further attention. There are some fundamental issues that emerge from hearing the children talk about their classroom experiences, which help to frame the sense they make of their learning - past, present and future.