Disciplinary perspectives on feedback processes: towards signature feedback practices

Feedback processes are situated within the norms and practices of disciplinary learning activities. Through a sociocultural lens, this study seeks to understand disciplinary feedback possibilities and challenges through a study of four different disciplines at a research-intensive English medium university. Two soft applied and two hard applied disciplines were selected: architecture, education, engineering and medicine. Research methods comprised interviews with teachers and students, and carefully chosen classroom observations. The findings exemplify both disciplinary-specific and generic ways of implementing feedback processes, with critical reviews in architecture and bedside rounds in medicine representing significant disciplinary feedback practices. A contribution of the paper lies in suggesting a novel concept of signature feedback practices to denote characteristic feedback strategies used in specific disciplines. A key implication for practice lies in the potential for the development of signature feedback practices focused on ways of thinking and doing which are authentic to the discipline.