Social identities, norms, and context in student feedback literacy in higher education

The role of social identity and social norms has been largely overlooked in the feedback process. In the current chapter, we explain the potential role we feel social identity (with one’s academic discipline, for example) could play in the development of students’ feedback literacy and how students engage with feedback. To put this in context, we examine historical and contemporary models of feedback literacy to consider how social identities, peer norms and social context feature in those models, implicitly or explicitly. We also review the growing literature on academic discipline social identity and approaches to
learning, as a framework for the role of identities in the development of student approaches to feedback. We argue that student identity plays a role in determining students’ engagement with feedback as a part of a deep approach to learning, and argue for a new recognition of this vital aspects of the feedback process.