Who is feedback for?

Abstract

The articles in this regular issue look at different forms of assessment practices such as grading and feedback and how stakeholders interact with the outcomes of these practices. The first article presents a research study from Sweden on holistic and analytic grading. As grades are the main criteria for selecting schools for higher education, and they are based upon teachers’ judgement, grading is rather high stakes for students in Sweden. Johnson et al. (this issue) set up an experimental study where Swedish teachers were randomly assigned to two different conditions (i.e. analytic or holistic grading), in either English as a foreign language (EFL) or mathematics. The research study was conducted online, with only grades and written justification from the teachers collected by the research team. In the analytic condition, teachers received authentic student responses from four students four times, and were asked to grade these through an Internet-based form. At the end of the semester, teachers were asked to provide an overall grade. In the holistic condition, teachers received all material at one time, and would therefore not be influenced by previous experiences. Findings indicate that analytic grading was preferable to holistic grading in terms of agreement among teachers, with stronger effects found in EFL. Teachers in the analytic conditions made more references to grade levels without specifying criteria, while teachers in the holistic conditions provided more references to criteria in their justifications. Although the participants volunteered for the experiment and it was relatively small, the study offers important empirical results in an area where there are still more questions than solutions. The authors propose further investigations into how to increase agreement between teachers’ grading, including using moderation procedures where teachers could review each other’s grading. In the second article, Yan et al. (this issue) present a systematic review on factors influencing teacher’s intentions and implementations regarding formative assessment. The 52 studies included in the qualitative synthesis discuss issues such as how teachers’ selfefficacy and education and training, influence their intention to conduct formative assessment, and add to previous reviews on implementation of formative assessment. More specifically, it demonstrates how not only contextual but also personal factors need to be taken into consideration when designing school-based support measures or teacher professional development programmes with the aim to promote formative assessment practices. In the article Who is feedback for? The influence of accountability and quality assurance agendas on the enactment of feedback processes, Winstone & Cardiff (this issue) explore the consequences of the evaluation and accountability measures in higher education in UK, and how it influences and interacts with feedback processes from teachers to students. The study is of importance, as we have less knowledge of the unintended consequences of the current accountability system, which at the best can improve ASSESSMENT IN EDUCATION: PRINCIPLES, POLICY & PRACTICE 2021, VOL. 28, NO. 3, 209–211 https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2021.1975996