The impact of evolving feedback ecology on students’ feedback literacy development remains underexplored. This study examined the effects of transitioning from secondary to higher education on students’ conceptions and practices of feedback literacy. The research involved 35 first-year associate’s degree students from various disciplines at a Hong Kong higher education institution. Through semi-structured interviews and reflective journals, changes and continuities in students’ feedback literacy were explored, alongside the critical ecological factors influencing these transformations. Three types of feedback literacy emerged – passive, bidirectional and self-regulated – representing varying degrees of student autonomy and teacher involvement in the feedback process. The study also identified contextual factors (e.g. continuous assessments, teacher–student consultation sessions, alternative communication and group dynamics) and individual factors that influenced students’ feedback practices. The implications of these findings for cultivating conducive feedback ecology and enhancing student feedback literacy are discussed. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

Recent discussions on student feedback literacy have been primarily conceptual and framed from the perspectives of scholars and educators. Few empirical studies have explored what and how college students conceive of student feedback literacy. To address this research gap, we explored Hong Kong college students’ conceptions of student feedback literacy. Fifteen Bachelor of Education students were individually interviewed to elaborate on the mind maps they had drawn about student feedback literacy. The data analysis revealed that the participants depicted several feedback competencies required for students to elicit and process feedback but paid scant attention to the competencies needed to enact feedback. Meanwhile, they believed that a feedback-literate student should appreciate the values of feedback and be active, modest and committed in the feedback process. The participants’ conceptions of student feedback literacy were ecologically influenced by Chinese cultural values, the university learning setting, their prior feedback experiences, and course learning. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

There is now a worldwide focus on the quality of university teaching and yet there is general dissatisfaction in universities with the student evaluation of teaching system. Peer observation of teaching seems to hold much promise in the assessment of teaching quality, but such observation pays little attention to the quality of teaching as perceived by students. One approach to overcome this deficiency is for faculty and students to also partner in the assessment of a faculty member's teaching, with a student trained in observation and feedback techniques acting as a peer in the observation process. This paper describes and evaluates an ongoing student consultant initiative at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. It presents faculty and student observations in terms of the benefits to faculty regarding potential enhancement of university teaching, and the benefits to students especially in terms of close collaboration with faculty and training in consultation techniques. The paper notes that the student consultant initiative has been more popular with students than faculty, and recommends further investigation of the potential of such programmes in Hong Kong higher education.