Inside the ‘body box’: exploring feedback in higher education

Abstract

In recent years, educational research has paid special attention to teachers’ practical-operative experience. The growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has become a turning point in sociological, anthropological and educational studies. The present study aims to explore lecturers’ perceptions and conceptions of feedback and their daily professional practice, with a focus on the use of body movement while providing feedback during the class. Even though educational research has paid a lot of attention to the concepts of practice and performance, there are very few studies that consider the main actor included in the definition of those concepts: the body. Methodologically this exploratory case study uses a mixed methods approach. Results identified two types of issues: the first one concerns the relation between lecturer and students during the feedback practice; the second one concerns the internal coherence of lecturers between the kind of verbal feedback they provide during the lesson and how at the same time they act bodily.

Keywords:

• Feedback
• body
• educational assessment
• Laban movement analysis
• lecturers’ perception

Acknowledgment

My deepest thanks are to Dr Maddalena Taras (University of Sunderland) for her willingness to help me during all the phases of the project, to discuss ideas, to our inspiring discussions on metaphors, and to provide useful feedback.