What attributes guide best practice for effective feedback? A scoping review

There has been an observed increase in literature concerning feedback within the last decade, with the importance of feedback well documented. Current discourse promotes feedback as an interactive, dialogic process between the learner and the learning partner. While much has been written about effective feedback, less is known about key elements that support dialogic feedback. It is therefore important to investigate what is known about the elements that guide best practice for effective feedback. A scoping review of the extant literature following Arksey and O’Malley’s methodology was conducted. A search of literature published in English identified sixty-one publications eligible for this review. Publications were representative of the international literature from both empirical and non-empirical sources. Feedback elements were extracted from the included publications and categorised into 11 core attributes. The attributes identified feedback as: being a process; criteria-based; requiring multiple forms and sources of data/evidence; needs to be desired by the recipient (i.e. invited and welcomed); timely; responsive to the learner (i.e. tailored to developmental needs/learning preferences of the learner); frequent; future-focussed; reciprocal (i.e. two-way); involves skilful interaction; and is multidimensional (i.e. engages the learner in more than one way). Despite the rhetoric on feedback as a ‘dialogic process’, a gap remains in our understanding around what is required to engage the learner as an equal partner in the feedback process. Further research exploring the impact of specific aspects of the feedback process on practice is required.