Student perceptions of hidden messages in teacher written feedback

• Students receive implicit messages from teacher feedback.
• These concern tutors’ beliefs about the subject, learning, and disciplinary literacy.
• Interviews with 24 students at a Hong Kong university identify these messages.
• These have inadvertent effects on students’ attitudes to study, writing, and learning.

Students take away a variety of messages from teachers’ responses to their writing, although not all the information conveyed is explicit or related to the work at hand. In fact, both the content of this feedback and the ways they respond can lead students to interpret their tutors’ beliefs about their subject, about learning, and about the value of literacy in their disciplines. Drawing on a series of interviews with 24 first and second year students at a Hong Kong university, this paper seeks to identify what these messages are and the consequences they can have for students’ attitudes to their field of study, to disciplinary writing, to learning and to teacher–student relationships.