Got feedback?

摘要

Feedback has a long and varied career that has sent fingers into many different disciplines. That we need feedback is a generally accepted feature of the human condition. We appreciate and will actively seek it out when it seems likely to provide self-actualisation, validation, praise or a visible marker of superior achievement. Feedback and peer mentoring can also help us to find meaning in what we do, and to fend off cynicism and burnout. At the same time, if we are honest, we humans often avoid or eschew feedback for fear that it will be bad, that it might threaten our fragile self-efficacy or even our raison d'etre. The intransigence that results from the tension between thirst for the positive and fear of the negative provides powerful evidence in support of the argument that we should study our learners' feedback-seeking behaviours, and, by understanding, enhance and enable them. Further, it seems fair to assume that feedback sought actively is better than feedback applied passively.