An Interpretative Phenomenological Study to Understand the Perceived Value and Impact of Feedback on the Learning Experience of Pre-Registration Healthcare Students

This thesis examines how feedback is used by pre-registration healthcare students to support their learning. It investigates feedback experiences in authentic academic and practice-based environments, using the student's experience as the main vehicle by which to develop an understanding about the value and impact of feedback. This interpretative phenomenological study utilises a small sample of pre-registration healthcare students and staff from a single UK university and explores their lived experiences of feedback through a lifeworld lens. Situated learning and the theory of communities of practice is used to understand the data. The study identifies the significance of the healthcare discipline to shape the learning from feedback experiences of the students in relation to their developing identity as practitioners. The situation in which learning takes place for pre-registration healthcare students is complex. Students learn across multiple sites and have a dual role of learner and clinician. This complexity of the learning experience alongside the students’ uncertainties in relation to their developing identity affects how they engage with feedback. The students’ perception of “self” also influences how feedback is understood and internalised. The study argues that relationships and learning-focussed communities of practice are core to the way that feedback is experienced by these students. The dual role that these students occupy, and lack of direction from their educators in making clear how feedback should be used, appears to create a lack of clarity regarding the purpose of feedback. The authenticity of the learning experience was also found to be significant in supporting the students’ learning. The relationship between the learner “self”, the purpose of feedback, the authenticity of the learning experience, and the membership of multiple communities of practice are intertwined and appear to be significant to the impact and value of learning from feedback for the pre-registration healthcare students.