When I say … feedback

Abstract

Feedback is a controversial topic in medical education. Both students and staff say they value it. Yet students often complain that they don’t get enough feedback and suggest that it is done to rather than with them, whereas staff report providing feedback at higher volumes than students perceive and claim that their comments are more valuable for learning than students appreciate. In part, these discrepancies in learner and teacher reports may be a result of students failing to notice feedback or educators misreporting the frequency with which they offer it. However, another possibility is that learners and educators have different definitions of what feedback is. Importantly, such ambiguities exist not only in educational practices, but also in the literature. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore what we mean when we say ‘feedback’.