Innovations in Formative Assessment: Enhancing Student Learning and Feedback Practices

Dear Colleagues,

Research from various national contexts and educational levels over the past decades has consistently underscored the importance of formative assessment in supporting and enhancing student learning. A substantial body of scholarship highlights formative feedback as one of the most critical components of successful formative assessment. Formative feedback informs the learner about the quality of their work or learning processes, guidance on how these can be improved, and direction on how to enact such improvements (Black & Wiliam, 1998, 2009; Brandmo & Gamlem, 2025). Crucially, formative feedback is integrated within the learning process and is intended to inform ongoing learning, rather than merely evaluating completed work. When enacted effectively, such feedback can support self-regulation, deepen understanding, and promote learners’ active engagement with learning goals. Despite this well-documented potential, the implementation of high-quality formative feedback remains challenging in practice. Common barriers include increasing teacher workload, limited time for dialogue and follow-up, and varying levels of assessment literacy among both teachers and students (Engelsen & Smith, 2014; Pastore, 2023). These challenges underscore the need for continued innovation and research into formative assessment and feedback practices that are sustainable, equitable, and pedagogically meaningful.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together high-quality empirical studies from diverse educational contexts worldwide that examine feedback practices within formative assessment. The Special Issue particularly seeks contributions that investigate how various feedback approaches, tools, methods, technologies or pedagogical interventions are designed, implemented, and evaluated in formative assessment settings. We welcome rigorous studies that explore the potential of such practices to enhance student learning outcomes in the broadest sense, including cognitive, affective, behavioural, and self-regulatory dimensions of learning. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Innovative feedback practices aimed at enhancing student learning outcomes.
• The use of AI to support, personalise, or stimulate students’ uptake and use of formative feedback.
• Interventions designed to improve the quality and impact of formative feedback practices.
• Students’ engagement with, interpretation of, and enactment of formative feedback.
• Feedback literacy among students and teachers and its role in effective formative assessment.
• Dialogic and peer feedback practices within formative assessment contexts.
• Formative assessment and feedback in technology-enhanced, online, or blended learning environments.
• Teachers’ assessment literacy and professional learning related to formative feedback.
• Equity, inclusion, and ethical considerations in formative feedback practices.
• Formative feedback as a means of supporting self-regulated learning and student agency.

References:

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 5–31.

Brandmo, C. & Gamlem, S. M. (2025). Students’ perceptions and outcome of teacher feedback: a systematic review. Frontiers in Education, 10:1572950. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1572950

Engelsen, K. S., & Smith, K. (2014). Assessment literacy. In C. Wyatt-Smith, V. Klenowski & P. Colbert (Eds.), Designing Assessment for Quality Learning (Vol. 1, pp. 91–107). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer International.

Pastore, S. (2023). Teacher assessment literacy: a systematic review. Frontiers in Education. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1217167

Prof. Dr. Tony Burner
Prof. Dr. Siv M. Gamlem
Guest Editors

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• formative feedback
• formative assessment
• feedback literacy
• student outcomes
• student learning