Symphony with noises and keynotes: Effective feedback process in L2 postgraduate academic writing from a teacher feedback literacy perspective

Abstract

While teacher feedback literacy has garnered increasing scholarly interest, much discussion has centred on teachers’ perspectives, overlooking students’ insights into teacher feedback literacy in enhancing their learning (and writing). To address this issue, this study draws on the effective feedback process recognised by the teacher and students within the same L2 postgraduate academic writing class, exploring the key teacher competencies that compose and contextualise teacher feedback literacy. The analysis of individual interviews with the teacher and nine students, 150 students’ self-reflections and classroom observations informs the development of a two-dimension framework with six key competencies contributing to teacher feedback literacy. The first is autonomous dimension, which includes three teacher competencies characterised by ‘collaboration’, ‘reflection’ and ‘refinement’, emphasising teachers’ self-governance, continuous improvement and proactivity in designing and enacting feedback practices. The second is facilitative dimension, which encompasses such competencies as facilitating a ‘synergy’, ‘student reflective and critical engagement’ and ‘long-term effects’ of feedback practices, highlighting teachers’ capacity of enabling and guiding the students, and making the feedback process more engaging. The two-dimension framework of teacher competencies suggests a longitudinal perspective of constructing a student-led feedback process that fosters synergic collaborations among human agents and their interactions with feedback resources and artefacts.