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

The study addresses how university EFL teachers perceive the need to cultivate student feedback literacy and what practices they use to foster it. Although feedback has strong potential to enhance learning, its benefits depend on students’ agency to interpret and act on feedback—i.e., student feedback literacy. Literature has called on teachers to develop student feedback literacy as part of teaching, but it is unclear whether teachers have embraced this and how they enact it. This study explores teachers’ perceptions and practices via interviews and classroom observations to fill a gap in empirical work, particularly in EFL contexts. Research questions: (1) What are university EFL teachers’ perceptions about cultivating student feedback literacy? (2) What are their feedback-enabling practices and how might these facilitate development of student feedback literacy?

Student feedback literacy has evolved alongside a reconceptualization of feedback from teacher-delivered information to a student-centered, action-oriented process emphasizing agency. Sutton (2012) introduced the concept; Carless and Boud (2018) defined it as understandings, capacities, and dispositions to make sense of information and enhance work, comprising appreciating feedback, making judgments, managing affect, and taking action. Molloy et al. (2020) provided a learner-centered framework spanning cognitive and behavioral dimensions. Recent work highlights dynamic, situated, socio-material and ecological perspectives (e.g., Carless 2023; Chong 2021; Gravett 2022; Pitt & Winstone 2023). Empirical studies report students’ suboptimal feedback literacy (e.g., passivity, preference for corrective feedback, limited uptake). Cultivation requires purposeful, sequenced practice by teachers. Interventions include self-assessment, peer review, exemplars, rubrics/criteria, written responses/rebuttals, feedback request forms, interactive coversheets, and holistic toolkits (Winstone et al. 2019), and instructional models guiding elicitation, interpretation, application, and response (Kleijn 2021). Evidence generally supports positive impacts on students’ understanding, appreciation, confidence, resilience, engagement, and action, including in EFL contexts (Ma et al. 2021; Man et al. 2022). Limitations include poor participation and design challenges, and a disciplinary skew toward health-related fields with limited attention to language and cultural studies. Teacher perspectives are underrepresented, and assumptions that teachers already embed effective feedback designs may be unfounded; teachers must first perceive the need and possess expertise to incorporate student feedback literacy.

Design: Qualitative exploratory study using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations; thematic analysis combining deductive and inductive coding. Context and participants: One recently upgraded local university in Shandong Province, China, with ~60 EFL teachers. Convenience sampling with purposeful diversity (gender, education, courses, experience). Nine university EFL teachers (T1–T9): 5 MAs, 2 PhDs, 1 BA; 3–19 years’ experience; courses included writing, reading, listening, comprehensive/advanced English, interpretation, and College English for non-majors across disciplines. Data collection: Semi-structured interviews in Chinese (~25 minutes each) after clarifying the term “student feedback literacy.” Recorded with consent, transcribed via iflyrec.com and checked by the first author. To mitigate self-report demand effects, classroom observations of 2–6 sessions per participant were conducted across phases (lead-in, lectures, exercises), with field notes. Analysis: Followed Gao & Zhang’s (2020) five-step model. Both authors independently coded one transcript, resolving differences through negotiation. Deductive codes informed by Carless & Boud (2018) and Molloy et al. (2020) (e.g., appreciating feedback, evaluative judgment, affect, action, eliciting/using information). Inductive coding added novel areas (e.g., feedback as students’ responses, test-focused exercises). Field notes were similarly coded; new codes added when necessary (e.g., casual conversations, sharing personal experience). Codes were organized into themes and higher-order categories (e.g., teachers’ orientations to feedback). Member checking with participants enhanced interpretive validity.

- Teacher orientations to feedback: Participants commonly conceptualized feedback as teacher-centered assessment of student performance. A few described a two-fold notion including student responses (e.g., eye contact, answers) but still centered teacher roles. Student agency was largely neglected, as seen in translation exercises where teachers assessed and supplied reference answers with little time for student reflection or action. - Awareness of cultivating student feedback literacy: Most participants denied consciously cultivating student feedback literacy, attributing this to traditional, teacher-directed views of feedback. Additional factors included lack of national policy guidance (e.g., Curriculum Standards not mentioning feedback literacy) and institutional pressures (workload, research requirements) that deprioritized non-mandatory feedback design. - Unsystematic practices: Teachers acknowledged they did not plan feedback interventions systematically; decisions were intuitive and opportunistic rather than designed. - Subconscious efforts fostering feedback literacy occurred across three dimensions: • Cognitive steering: Occasional messaging about feedback as a means of improvement; routine but often unproductive prompts (e.g., “any questions?”). Guidance was casual and limited. • Behavioral regulation: Practices pressing for action included requiring resubmission of revised work; linking feedback to high-stakes exams (TEM-4, CET-4, terminal exams) mentioned by seven participants; emphasizing transferability and timing of comments; organizing peer review, rubric clarification, and exemplar discussion (especially in writing). Implementation was course- and proficiency-dependent; peer review was less used in translation due to perceived low proficiency reliance on reference answers. • Affective support and rapport: Teachers balanced objectivity and face-saving, softened criticism, prepared students for critique, and often gave whole-class assessments to avoid embarrassment. In 31 of 48 observed sessions, teachers arrived ~10 minutes early, conversed casually, played music, or shared personal experiences to build rapport. Despite efforts, large class sizes and hierarchical norms sustained teacher–student distance. - Course dependency: Feedback practices varied by course; surprisingly, interpretation classes offered fewer feedback-literacy opportunities than expected, underscoring contextual mediators.

Findings show teachers largely hold a teacher-centered, information-transmission view of feedback, hindering recognition of student agency and the perceived necessity to cultivate feedback literacy. This aligns with calls to shift from product to process and from teacher-centered to student-oriented feedback. System-level factors (policy, institutional incentives, resource allocation) shape practices, consistent with concepts of feedback regimes and systemic feedback literacy. Teachers’ practices were intuitive and loosely organized, indicating underdeveloped teacher feedback literacy, particularly in the design dimension, alongside relational and pragmatic aspects. Nonetheless, teachers’ subconscious cognitive, behavioral, and affective supports incidentally fostered student feedback literacy, with particular strength in affective care. To better align expectations and engagement, teachers need to explicitly steer cognition—clarifying the nature and purposes of feedback, rationales for engagement, and student roles as active agents. Behavioral supports should more deliberately integrate self-assessment (currently neglected), peer review training, and task designs that ensure timeliness and transferability. Given large classes and hierarchical relationships, dialogic, mobile-assisted feedback could enhance interaction and rapport. Policy initiatives and professional development should cultivate teacher feedback literacy and embed student feedback literacy within curricula.

This study offers an initial empirical account of university EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices regarding the cultivation of student feedback literacy. Teachers predominantly conceptualized feedback as teacher-centered and showed limited awareness and systematic design for fostering student feedback literacy. Despite this, they incidentally supported students through cognitive steering, behavioral regulation, and affective support. The study underscores the need to enhance teacher feedback literacy—especially in design, relational, and pragmatic dimensions—through teacher education and institutional policies that value and resource feedback work. Strengthening systemic support and professional development can create virtuous cycles where teacher and student feedback literacies co-develop. Future work should examine mediating factors and differences among teachers, and incorporate student perspectives to tailor supports for diverse learners.

- Small, homogeneous sample (nine EFL teachers from a single Chinese university) limits transferability across contexts and disciplines. - Did not examine intra-sample differences in perceptions/practices or mediating factors. - Lacked systematic analysis from students’ perspectives and individual differences; future studies should include these to deepen understanding and generalizability.