Feedback in higher education is often framed as either as information (transmission model) or a process (dialogic or learning model), both falling into performative notions of learning as qualification (improving learning outcomes). In both cases, feedback risks becoming detached from the relational, ethical, and affective dimensions of education. This ignite talk reimagines feedback as a relational practice: not something done to students, but something co-created with them through dialogic encounters that are situated, embodied, and authentic.

Drawing on critiques of the (neo-)“banking model” of education (Freire, 1970) and of the self-regulated neoliberal individual (Gourlay, 2015), this ignite talk challenges dominant feedback discourses that focus on equipment logics (feedback literacy as skills). Instead, it positions feedback as lived “happenings” that are socially and materially situated, and which act as beginnings for students to take up or reject, creating an opening for students’ response-ability. From this perspective, feedback is neither neutral nor purely cognitive; it is shaped by power, positionality, emotions, histories, and forces surrounding these feedback encounters.

This ignite talk is theoretically grounded in relational pedagogies (Gravett, 2022 ; Gravett and Carless, 2023) and empirically supported by my completed doctoral research (Passeport, 2025). It attends to the ways in which human and non-human elements (bodies, positionalities, assessment artefacts, digital platforms, physical spaces, timescapes) become entangled in feedback practices. These assemblages influence how feedback is encountered, interpreted, taken up, or resisted. Following this, the session foregrounds the ethical and political work of feedback, including whose voices are legitimised, whose emotions are managed or silenced, and how responsibility is distributed between students, educators, and institutions.

The study was carried out in the Netherlands and is relevant to international Higher Education Institutions. The participants were a mis of domestic and international students, showing differences in experiences.

The onto-epistemological positioning of the research was informed by critical theory, which is absent in feedback research (Nieminen, Bearman and Tai, 2023), and the theoretical framing was inspired by the work of Gravett (2022) in situating feedback literacies as sociomaterial practices. The study adopted a two-stage, qualitative mixed-method design: Stage one involved 16 students completing a narrative frame (Barkhuizen and Wette, 2008) through an anonymous questionnaire, designed to elicit stories of encountering teacher feedback (Passeport, 2023). Stage two involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with a smaller group of eight students from the stage one sample (three domestic, five international) and integrated the use of photo-elicitation to support participants in visualizing their experiences of teacher feedback. This abstract zooms into the data collected stage two (interviews) which was analysed through thematic coding in NVivo, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2022) which facilitated a close, idiographic examination of the data, representing both the individual accounts and shared experiences.

For practitioners, this ignite talk offers a lens for noticing the often-invisible micro-moves of feedback and care-ful directions that enable (or close) dialogue. For researchers, it proposes feedback as a fertile site for examining relationality, affect, and response-(in)ability in assessment cultures. Throughout, short provocations and illustrative examples from my doctoral research will be used to invite participants to reflect on their own feedback practices and the conditions that shape them. The ignite talk concludes by outlining principles for cultivating relational feedback cultures that are attentive to socialisation and subjectification purposes of education (Biesta, 2022), moving beyond performative notions of feedback, and towards feedback as a liminal space of situated interruptive encounters that allow students to meet their own freedom.

Barkhuizen, G. and Wette, R. (2008) 'Narrative frames for investigating the experiences of language teachers', System, 36(3), pp. 372-387. Biesta, G.J.J. (2022) World-centred education: a view for the present. New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Penguin Classics. Gourlay, L. (2015) '‘Student engagement’ and the tyranny of participation', Teaching in Higher Education, 20(4), pp. 402-411. Gravett, K. (2022) 'Feedback literacies as sociomaterial practice', Critical Studies in Education, 63(2), pp. 261-274. Gravett, K. and Carless, D. (2023) 'Feedback literacy-as-event: relationality, space and temporality in feedback encounters', Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(2), pp. 142-153. Nieminen, J.H., Bearman, M. and Tai, J.H.-M. (2023) 'How is theory used in assessment and feedback research? A critical review', Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 48(1), pp. 77-94. Passeport, S. (2023) 'Ringing the inner voice: listening to students' experiences of teacher-generated feedback using narrative frames', AEA-Europe conference 2023: Assessment reform journeys: intentions, enactment and evaluation, Valletta (Malta), 3 November. Passeport, S. (2025) “Thank you for the feedback, but no!” Listening to the experiences of first-year students encountering the ‘power’ of teacher feedback.” Doctoral Thesis. University of Dundee. Available at: https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/thank-you-for-the-feedback-but-no-listening-to-the-experiences-of/ (Accessed: 18 Jan 2026). Smith, J.A., Flowers, P. and Larkin, M. (2022) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: theory, method and research. 2nd edn. London: Sage.