Agency and autonomy in feedback
Autonomy matters
An interesting finding from our study was that openness to feedback was promoted by offering choice and independence within assessment systems.
When assessment systems provided elements of choice, enabling students to demonstrate their knowledge to themselves or their tutors, students’ agency was enhanced. Within feedback, agency was enhanced by enabling students to act independently in accessing and using feedback. These findings had not previously been clearly demonstrated in the literature.
Although active involvement by students in the learning process has increasingly been accepted, it has proved much more difficult to achieve this transformation in assessment and feedback processes, despite enthusiastic advocates. It could be argued that there are significant risks to patients if students were given excessive choice in the assessment system and were free to ignore uncomfortable feedback.