This paper addresses a series of issues relating to transitions and transformations of postgraduate students in a UK context. It therefore has two foci: teaching and learning at post-graduate level (and in particular, processes of formative assessment and feedback during the programmes of study), and learning transitions. The paper is informed by data collected from a UK Higher Education Academy Project: Facilitating Transitions to Masters-level Learning through Improving Formative Assessment and Feedback. It will examine formative assessment and feedback practices, and in particular, reflective modes; their integration into pedagogic practices; and the developmental, transparent and timely extent of such feedback. And in addition, the paper will examine how these processes impact on the transitional nature of postgraduate study. Transitional processes are characterised by: structure/agency relations; their compliance capacity in relation to formal rules, regulations and norms; movement through time; the extent of their cultural embeddedness; their pathologising capacity (i.e. whether and to what extent the transition is understood as a normalizing and thus pathologising mechanism); their position in the lifecourse; their focus (for example, learning transitions, which refer to issues such as familiarity, receptiveness, assimilation, negotiation, rearrangement, formalisation, assessment/ accreditation, etc); and how they relate to some end-point.