Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in Educational Evaluation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/stueduc Shared language of feedback and assessment. Perception of teachers and students in three Icelandic secondary schools Ívar Rafn Jónsson a, ⁎ , Kari Smith b , Guðrún Geirsdóttir c a School of Education, University of Iceland, Iceland b Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway c Faculty of Teacher Education, School of Education, University of Iceland, Iceland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Formative assessment Feedback Assessment policy Dialogue Upper-secondary school ABSTRACT This study addresses the issue of variability of perception of teachers and students regarding feedback; with the primary focus being the exploration of how teachers and students perceive assessment in the Icelandic context. According to prior research feedback is not necessarily received by the student in the same manner as intended by the teacher. A survey was administered to teachers and students from three schools with differing emphases on assessment policy. This study supports previous studies (Havnes et al., 2012), which have reported a sub- stantial gap in how teachers and students experience the manner in which feedback and assessment are prac- ticed. Findings revealed that the stronger the culture around formative assessment, the stronger the dialogue between teachers and students. Some implications are drawn from these findings. 1. Introduction Carefully selected and precise feedback is one of the most influential factors in students’ learning processes (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Hattie & Timperley,2007). Feedback is defined by Hattie and Timperley (2007) as “information provided by an agent regarding aspects of one’s per- formance or understanding that reduces the discrepancy between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood” (p. 86). In this paper, feedback refers both to the information about students’ work and their engagement with the feedback information. It is at the centre of formative assessment, mainly located in the dialogue between students and teachers, which Engelsen and Smith call “… the learning dialogue” (2010, p. 416). Sadler (2010) emphasizes the use of feedback as an essential element in enhancing further learning. Yet, for students to consider feedback useful and act on it, it has to be understood and accepted. Despite the importance of how feedback is perceived, rela- tively little research on the manner in which teachers and student perceive feedback has been carried out (Carvalho, Santos, Conboy, & Martins, 2014; Gamlem & Smith, 2013; Havnes, Smith, Dysthe, & Ludvigsen, 2012; Jonsson, 2013; Rakoczy, Harks, Klieme, Blum, & Hochweber, 2013). In the past, research has mostly focused on how to give effective feedback in order to enhance learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Hattie, 2012). Giving feedback implies that there is a receiver who perceives and decides whether to act on the feedback. Despite substantial research on how to give feedback, there is still a limited understanding of how feedback relates to learning (Shute, 2008). Wiliam (2013) notes how the literature on feedback has prior- itized studying the giving of feedback rather than the receiving of feedback. He claims: The question “What kind of feedback is best?” is meaningless, be- cause while a particular kind of feedback might make one student work harder, it might cause another student to give up. There can be no simple recipe for effective feedback; there is just no substitute for the teacher knowing their students (p. 18). Wiliams’ claim is relevant in the context of this research because it underpins the importance of taking students’ and teachers’ perspectives into consideration. Whereas researchers have different opinions of how feedback works, the importance of feedback perception cannot be ig- nored (Rakoczy et al., 2013; Strijbos, Narciss, & Dünnebier, 2010; Yorke, 2003). The theoretical framework is based on a social constructive para- digm on how learners construct their understanding in relation to others. That is to say, students are not seen as passive receivers of knowledge. Instead, they are active in making sense of the world by constructing the meaning of it (Bruner, 1996), and that meaning is constructed in dialogues with others (Bakhtin, 1986). Feedback plays an essential role in knowledge construction through proficient guidance by peers or adults and as an internal process which is part of a https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2017.11.003 Received 27 May 2017; Received in revised form 18 November 2017; Accepted 20 November 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ivar@fmos.is, irj11@hi.is (Í.R. Jónsson). Studies in Educational Evaluation 56 (2018) 52–58 0191-491X/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T