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Volume 2, April 2026

An Overview of Current Higher Education Feedback Research:

Implications for Improved Feedback Literacy

Author: JOSEPH DAVIES

DOI: https://doi.org/10.67039/ighe.gwr.002

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Executive Summary

This report was commissioned by Duke Kunshan University’s Institute for Global Higher Education (IGHE) and forms part of the pedagogical research and practice lab’s initiative to enhance higher education teaching and learning. The report reviews the key research literature on feedback in higher education and explores how practices have shifted from outdated transmission-focused towards a more student-centered, learning-focused approach. Over the past two decades, understandings of feedback have evolved significantly toward a model that emphasizes students as active, agentic participants in the learning process. Contemporary perspectives position feedback not merely as information given by teachers but as a process of sense-making, dialogue, and action that helps learners improve both their academic work and their long-term learning habits.

However, despite such valuable insights, higher education feedback policy and practice do not appear to be adopting or promoting learning-focused feedback as much as they should. In response to this issue, a central concept and a current frontier of higher education assessment research is feedback literacy – a powerful phenomenon that can be viewed from the perspective of both learners and teachers and is essential for improving feedback practice. Developing students’ feedback literacy requires intentional pedagogical design, opportunities for dialogue, and structured peer feedback. Teachers ultimately carry the responsibility for embedding these elements into curricula and assessment practices to create conditions that maximize the benefits of feedback. This report presents several interventions, as derived from the feedback research literature, that have potential applicability across various disciplines and contexts for developing feedback literacy.

Rather than simply summarize findings from the feedback research literature, the report attempts to identify gaps in the existing body of research and make viable suggestions for potential follow-up research and ongoing discussion to enhance higher education feedback practice. Moving forward, advancing feedback literacy requires more rigorous empirical studies, broader disciplinary perspectives, and a stronger focus on outcomes-based research. Only through these efforts can higher education institutions ensure that feedback practices are truly enhancing student learning across cultures, contexts and disciplines. The report is organized around four key areas: the overall effect of feedback and feedback literacy on student learning outcomes; the mechanisms through which feedback operates; the confidence that can be placed in the current evidence base; and actionable recommendations for feedback practice within the DKU context.

Key Takeaways

  • Feedback should be dialogic, ongoing, and learner-focused.
    • Carefully designed peer feedback and feedback training play a vital role in building feedback literacy.
    • Teachers’ curriculum and assessment design are central to enabling feedback literacy.
    • GenAI has a place for routine and formulaic feedback, but the uniquely human nature of recognition must be emphasized in feedback practice.
    • Future empirical feedback research must include more varied cultural and disciplinary contexts.
KEYWORDS:
Higher Education
Feedback Literacy
Assessment

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