Making sense of the feedback experience: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analytic study exploring the lived experience of student mental health nurses receiving written feedback on their written assessments.

Abstract

The aim of providing students with written assessment feedback is to support future development (Carless & Boud 2018; Hattie & Timperley 2007; Pitt & Quinlan 2022; Winstone & Nash 2016). Feedback itself has been identified as having one of the most powerful effects on student learning and development (Hattie & Timperley 2007; Wisniewski, et al 2019). Furthermore, feedback is essential for professional nursing practice, which requires engagement with, and skilled provision of feedback for both patient care and professional development (Nursing Midwifery Council 2018). Feedback is a common source of students’ dissatisfaction and thus detrimentally affects their rating on published measures such as the National Student Survey and Teaching Excellence Framework. This in turn negatively impacts the university position on national league tables of performance, which can threaten their economic security (Winstone & Carless 2021; Winstone et al 2021). In an attempt to enhance students’ satisfaction and league table position, Higher Education institutions have focused their efforts on consistency and standardisation of assessment feedback practices, yet satisfaction and engagement with assessment feedback remains poor (Winstone et al 2021).

This research explores phenomena from the student perspective, using IPA (Smith, et al 2022) to draw out personal and group experiential themes that capture how second year mental health nursing students make sense of their feedback experience. This thesis considers feedback from an interconnected perspective, exploring the students understanding of themselves and their position in the world of education, and is underpinned by a synthesis of critical realist and hermeneutic phenomenological ontology.

The research identified two key conceptual themes of educational baggage and the mediating influence of relationships that influence students’ fundamental engagement with their academic feedback experiences. The research reveals the ontological significance of feedback for students and provides conceptual clarity that may help develop feedback
literacy. Rather than approaches which game the NSS and TEF metrics, this research highlights the importance of authentic learner centred approaches to assessment feedback. The resulting principles of practice and recommendations offer potential strategies for effective learner centred and emancipatory feedback practice which extend beyond the formal assessment episode.