The role of feedback is highlighted as a key component for high quality teaching and student learning (eg. Black & Wiliam 1998, Hattie & Timperley 2007, Sadler 1989). There is however a lack of seeing feedback in connection with didactics and life in classrooms. Research on feedback takes place on micro level and is not paying attention to the classroom as institutional framing. Feedback research is not necessarily classroom research, and the two branches of research are not benefiting from each other. As Klette has pointed out, there is no obvious connection between didactics and classroom research (Klette 2007). We claim that there is a similar absence of connection between didactics and feedback. A consequence of this is a lack of focus on subject matter and content in feedback research (Coffey 2011, Bennett 2011). A striking feature in substantial parts of the feedback literature is a tendency to be general, focusing on strategies and techniques. The literature is however not connected to the content knowledge of teaching and learning (ibid.). There are exceptions from this, for instance in science, and some of this is even classroom research (eg. Shavelson 2008). In the materials of our study the exceptions are however quite few, and they are often single projects. In research on science teaching, Coffey et al (2011) find that the research focus is on the teachers’ strategies and techniques, not the content, even though the conversations are about science. In this study we discuss how didactics can contribute to link feedback theory closer to content and classroom teaching. To illuminate this we use research on "guided reading" as a case. Guided reading is a common method in reading instruction, and feedback and conversation between teacher and student is basic. By applying feedback theory on guided reading we show both the theory's relevance and weaknesses.

To reach a step further in this challenge, we will use theory from the German Didaktik tradition. We want to discuss some main results from feedback research in a didactical perspective. Our reading of research literature has convinced us that basic concepts in the Didaktik-tradition are compatible with and may shed light on the “feedback-concept”. The “Didaktik-tradition” refers to the German-European tradition of pedagogical thought that hold that there is a basic distinction between matter and meaning, and that teaching and learning in principle are autonomous activities (Westbury, 2000:15-39, Hopmann 2007). The distinction between matter and meaning understands the subject matter or content of teaching as different from the inner formative meaning that this content may inspire in the students. The teacher is responsible for teaching, but teaching can never by itself technically or mechanically achieve any specific goal or purpose. All learning is in this sense self-learning which the student must allow, start and bring to an end. The subject matter is presented by the teacher, but always interpreted by students. The meaning of the content is in the end outside the teacher’s control and managed by the students.

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