Abstract:

There is still some ambiguity about concepts and terminologies used for feedback practices on learning approach. Different researchers suggest different nomenclatures for concepts that, in some cases, may be partially or completely similar from a practical point of view. Clearly, there are intersections between different speeches within the same thinking process, regarding the elaboration of feedback for students. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the different conceptualization of feedback practices.

Formative assessment is not a specific practice, but a set of pedagogical approaches that lead students to act as transforming agents of their own learning, seeking to develop strategies for self-regulation of learning. The feedback generated by teachers is named formative when it is oriented to learners' engagement on how they can understand their own learning process, in order to make improvements.

The concept of sustainable feedback emerges from the opportunity to explore possibilities for a more dialogical and a lifelong focused approach to feedback practices.

This narrative literature review (Baumeister & Leary, 1997) aims to identify and understand the characteristics associated with the concept of sustainable feedback.

We analyzed papers exploring feedback practices in the formative assessment context. The focus on formative assessment stems from dialogic interaction and active student participation at the center of the learning process, basic aspects of feedback to be named sustainable, and inherent to this assessment format.

The main goals of this review are:
1) identify papers that explicitly mention the concept of sustainable feedback;
2) analyze their author's theoretical positioning, and
3) investigate the importance level those authors relate to the specific characteristics of the concept of sustainable feedback, in addition to other characteristics they might highlight.

We used SCOPUS as a database for the search and selection of papers. The search criteria were the title, abstract or keywords containing the term “feedback” and the abstract necessarily containing the terms “formative” and “assessment” or “formative” and “evaluation”. Only papers from journals specialized in educational field, in English and published between 2015 and 2021 were considered. The search resulted in 77 papers and 27 of those were excluded because we identified they did not come from formative assessment context. Therefore, we analyzed which of those 50 remaining papers are based on sustainable feedback concept. Finally, 4 papers met the last criteria. The results were organized and coded for the purposes of content analysis (Bardin, 1977).

We chose to anchor this review on the concept of sustainable feedback based on the perspective of Carless and colleagues (2011) and synthesized by Boud and Molloy (2013). Such studies indicate 4 characteristics that guide sustainable feedback practices.

We found that researchers based on sustainable feedback mainly consider 2 of the 4 characteristics presented by Boud and Molloy (2013). Also, 5 other characteristics were found for the conceptualization of feedback practices. Their understanding about sustainable feedback is clearly not the same, but partially similar. From the other observed characteristics they highlighted, we infer that those authors consider more than theoretical but also procedures approaching, such as timing and cycles are important for feedback practices to be effective.

Keywords:

Sustainable Feedback, Formative Assessment, Conceptualizing, Narrative Literature Review.