Feedback is one of the powerful levers in enhancing students’ academic performance. However, international and national studies reveal that not many students engage with feedback well because the conceptualisation of teachers as a feedback giver and students as a passive recipient in the transmission approach limits students’ responsibility and capacities for feedback uptake. This explains why some students lack understanding of feedback content, motivation and strategies to act on feedback. A more promising direction seems to be increasing students’ feedback responsibility and ownership through engaging them as feedback partners, also known as student-teacher feedback partnerships in this project.

The partnership approach stresses the repositioning of teachers and students and their shared responsibilities in feedback processes. The giver-receiver dichotomy in the transmission approach is replaced by more equal power dynamics in the partnership approach, represented by students as an active participant to seek and utilise feedback and teachers as a feedback designer to support and encourage students’ active participation. The defining characteristic of feedback partnerships is feedback co-construction in which students identify and articulate feedback needs and teachers respond to students’ feedback requests and co-develop improvement strategies with students. This project explores the feasibility of implementing feedback partnerships in the school context by examining teachers’ and students’ perceptions of and readiness for feedback partnerships and the factors influencing partnerships development in secondary schools.