Formative Feedback in Art School: Understanding Experiences, Perceptions, and the Role of Shared Assessment Literacy

This poster was presented at the GSA Learning and Teaching Conference on 10 June 2025. It shares early insights from a student–staff partnership project aimed at developing shared assessment literacy and improving the experience of formative feedback within art and design education. Formative feedback is embedded into the everyday rhythms of art school life — through tutorials, crits, and informal conversations — yet students often struggle to recognise or act on it. Drawing on work by Pitt and Winstone (2023) and insights gathered by student consultant Maisie Wills, the poster explores how feedback is offered, perceived, and valued differently across student and staff perspectives. Themes include the emotional and relational labour of feedback, mismatched expectations, and the often invisible nature of formative dialogue. The poster prompts reflection on whose responsibility feedback is, how feedback literacy might be better embedded into curriculum, and what it means to support students in navigating complex feedback ecologies. Designed to provoke conversation, the work contributes to institutional efforts to build a more inclusive, dialogic, and student-informed culture of assessment.