Feedback literacy can develop in ways a standard survey scale misses
Updated Jun 09, 2026
feedbackA university can keep asking students whether feedback is useful and still miss whether they are actually learning how to use it. That is why Kurt Coppens, Greet Langie, Naomi Winstone and Lynn Van den Broeck's Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education paper, "Tracking student feedback literacy: a longitudinal study from the perspective of feedback orientation", matters for UK teams working on student voice in assessment and feedback. The paper suggests feedback literacy may be changing even when a standard scale says it is not.
Context and research question
Student feedback literacy has become a familiar idea in higher education. The basic claim is straightforward: students do better with feedback when they know how to interpret comments, judge their value, manage the emotional response, and apply them to future work. For UK institutions, that matters because complaints about assessment and feedback are rarely only about turnaround time. They are often about whether students can make practical use of what they receive.
Coppens and colleagues ask a sharper question than most survey work does: how does student feedback literacy actually develop over time? The study followed engineering students across their three undergraduate years using a mixed-methods design. It combined the Feedback Orientation Scale with reflective logs and interviews. Because of attrition, the final longitudinal scale analysis was based on a very small sample of seven students, which is a clear limitation. Even so, the paper is useful because it tests whether a validated scale and richer reflective evidence tell the same story.
Key findings
The headline finding is a mismatch between the scale and the richer qualitative evidence. The Feedback Orientation Scale did not show growth across the period studied. If a university relied only on that instrument, it could easily conclude that feedback literacy had not developed in any meaningful way.
The logs and interviews pointed in a different direction. Students described their relationship with feedback as gradually evolving, and the researchers found positive changes in both the level of reflection students demonstrated and the feedback-related characteristics visible in their logs. In other words, the students did not simply say feedback mattered. They appeared to show a more developed way of engaging with it over time.
That matters because it suggests some of the most important change may sit in how students interpret, filter, and act on comments rather than in how they answer a stable closed-question scale. This fits wider evidence that students judge feedback comments as fairer when they are usable, because what counts is not only whether feedback exists but whether students can do something with it.
The authors capture the methodological warning clearly:
"These findings highlight the context-specific nuances that are not captured by the scale"
The paper also found no significant correlation between feedback orientation and academic achievement. That is a useful caution for UK teams. Better engagement with feedback is not the same thing as an immediate uplift in marks. Feedback literacy may still matter greatly, but its effects can be indirect, delayed, or dependent on course design and assessment structure.
Taken together, the paper points to a simple but important conclusion: a single survey instrument may be too blunt to show whether students are becoming more reflective and agentic in how they use feedback. For institutions trying to improve assessment practice, that is not a technical footnote. It is a measurement problem with practical consequences.
Practical implications
First, UK universities should avoid treating one feedback scale as a complete account of feedback culture. Closed items can still be useful, but they should be paired with open-text prompts, short reflective activities, or follow-up conversations that show how students are interpreting comments in practice. The benefit is that teams get a clearer picture of whether students are merely satisfied with feedback, confused by it, or actually using it to improve.
Second, institutions should measure feedback use nearer to the point where feedback is received and acted on. Annual surveys and end-of-module evaluations are often too distant from the moment of use. Shorter in-cycle prompts, or simple feed-forward routines that ask students what they will do next, are more likely to surface whether comments are changing behaviour. The benefit is earlier evidence and a better chance to improve the experience before the course ends.
Third, universities should analyse assessment comments for signs of agency, not just sentiment. Look for whether students mention knowing what to do next, understanding criteria, acting on previous comments, or seeking clarification when feedback is unclear. That is where Student Voice Analytics fits naturally. It helps teams separate themes such as usefulness, fairness, clarity, and actionability in open comments, then review them with a documented method such as the NSS open-text analysis methodology. The benefit is more defensible evidence about what is helping students use feedback well and what is still getting in the way.
The broader lesson is that feedback improvement should not stop at rewriting staff comments. Universities also need evidence on whether students are developing the habits that make those comments useful. That is where student voice becomes more than a satisfaction check. It becomes evidence about learning behaviour.
FAQ
Q: How should a university measure student feedback literacy without over-relying on one scale?
A: Use a mixed approach. Keep a small number of stable survey items, but add one or two open-text prompts about what students did with the feedback, what remained unclear, and what they changed in the next task. If possible, gather that evidence close to the feedback event rather than months later. This shows whether students are only reacting to feedback or actually using it.
Q: What should institutions make of the very small final sample in this study?
A: They should treat the findings cautiously but not dismiss them. The final longitudinal scale analysis relied on seven students, so the paper is not strong evidence about prevalence or effect size. Its value lies in the contrast between methods. It shows how a validated scale and richer reflective evidence can diverge, which is precisely the kind of methodological warning UK teams should take seriously before making strong claims from one instrument.
Q: What does this change about student voice work on assessment and feedback?
A: It pushes student voice beyond the question of whether students liked the feedback. Institutions get better evidence when they ask whether students understood it, trusted it, and knew how to apply it. That is especially important in module evaluations and local pulse work, where open comments can reveal whether the real problem is tone, clarity, timing, or the lack of an obvious next step.
References
[Paper Source]: Kurt Coppens, Greet Langie, Naomi Winstone and Lynn Van den Broeck "Tracking student feedback literacy: a longitudinal study from the perspective of feedback orientation" DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2026.2653888
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