What matters in the cultivation of student feedback literacy: exploring university EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices

Student feedback literacy has been widely recognized as a crucial lever in shaping self-regulated autonomous learners. Extant research has displayed a whole variety of feedback interventions to promote student feedback literacy. However, these discussions are either of a conceptual nature or draw on the experiences of feedback literate teachers. The perceptions and practices of those in-service teachers count in the cultivation of student feedback literacy, which quite unexpectedly have drawn scant attention. This qualitative study explored how university EFL teachers perceived the need to cultivate student feedback literacy and their actual practices through thematic analysis about data gathered from semi-structured interviews with 9 Chinese university EFL teachers and classroom observation. Results revealed an obvious lack of awareness among the participants to purposefully develop student feedback literacy, underpinned by the conceptualization of feedback as teacher-centered and compounded by a shortage of relevant guiding policies. However, the participants subconsciously promoted student feedback literacy through cognitive steering, behavioral regulation and affective support in unsystematic and disorganized feedback interventions. The findings highlight the exigency for teachers to deepen their understandings about feedback and call for policy support from the authorities. Implications are discussed to chart the potentials to optimize the cultivation of student feedback literacy.