Feedback: ensuring it leads to enhanced learning

Editors' note: This article is the first in a series of commissioned papers that will form a 'go to' resource for health professionals who teach in clinical settings. Professor David Boud of the University of Technology, Sydney, and Deakin University, Victoria, opens the series with an insightful article discussing new ways of conceptualising feedback, with an emphasis on how assessment and feedback can contribute to ongoing learning, and the need for feedback to infl uence what learners do rather than merely providing them with information. He emphasises that feedback should be an ongoing dialogue and that there is a need for repeated observation to ensure that learners respond to feedback and make changes in their performance.