Currently reading Corbin et al. (2026) on “the pedagogical power of recognition in feedback”
I remember learning about the “four ears” in Schulz von Thun’s model, where the same message (e.g. “there is not a lot of light here”) can be heard as stating a fact (“it’s dark here”), as saying something about the sender (“I’m uncomfortable when I cannot see properly”), as saying something something about the relationship (“I don’t think you are paying enough attention to the environment we are in”), or as an appeal (“switch on another lamp”). If things are so complicated with such a simple message already (and even worse — the sender might have meant it in all four different ways, too, so it is not just about the receiver!), it is not surprising at all that the exact same feedback given to students can land in very different ways.
I just read this super interesting article by Corbin et al. (2026) on “the pedagogical power of recognition in feedback“, where they write that “Learning from feedback requires that students treat comments as reasons to act differently – to revise, to persist, to rethink. The quality of the interpersonal relationship between the student and the provider of the information is the power driving this transformation.” And they use the concept of “recognition” to explain the quality of relationship required.
Recognition is “the mutual acknowledgment of agency and standing between people“. This is related to all the concepts I’ve been playing with recently: belonging, trust, care; but is more of an umbrella of what it means to have a relationship between teachers and students. Recognition matters to teachers and students — if it is not there, we might feel like we don’t belong, we feel distrust(ed), no care or not cared for. And if someone feels unrecognized, the whole relationships erodes. “To be recognised is to have one’s effort acknowledged as belonging to a world of shared meaning; to be misrecognised or ignored is to have that world withdraw. In this way, recognition transforms information into motivation and judgment into learning. Feedback becomes pedagogically powerful when it binds understanding to self-formation, when it gives students reasons to care, to change, or to defend what they have done.” Corbin et al. (2026) write that “[t]he crucial point is that recognition is not a luxury layered onto feedback comments, it is the mechanism by which information acquires pedagogical force. To care about feedback’s impact on learning is therefore already to care about recognition.”
There are several ways for recognition to go wrong:
- Misrecognition: “when someone’s identity is actively misrepresented“, e.g. being misgendered (or, probably, being addressed by the wrong name repeatedly, etc)
- Under-recignition: “when students receive generic stock comments that fail to acknowledge their identity as a learner and individual trajectory“
- Conditional recognition: “when a student feels heard only if they conform to dominant cultural or linguistic norms“
All of these are breakdowns in the relationship that cannot be healed by typical feedback fixes, like providing it faster or improving its structure; they need to be approached through repairing the relationships from both sides and in a supportive environment: “Rather than see teachers as solely responsible for feedback’s effectiveness, our recognitive framework shows that students have a role in reaffirming the identity and feedback activity of teachers, and that tertiary institutions have a role to play in ensuring that feedback takes place in mutually recognitive relationships, for example, ensuring opportunities for relationships to be established between students and staff who offer comments on work, rather than outsourcing marking to a cohort of sessional staff who are unable to take up lecturing or tutoring responsibilities.” Especially the last point is so important: The way education is administered has such a large effect on the context in which relationships between teachers and students are being built!
The concept of recognition can also explain why feedback from AI feels “safe”: because an AI cannot recognize students in the sense a human can, and therefore there is no risk of being judged. They refer to their earlier article, Corbin et al. (2025), where they highlight that AI feedback has good uses, for example for routine tasks (grammar checks, citation styles, etc), where “students can repeatedly seek clarification without concern for taxing another person’s time or patience“, and AI is available 24/7. The model they develop there is really helpful: “By understanding which aspects of feedback require recognition and which do not, educators can strategically deploy GenAI systems to handle extra-recognitive tasks, freeing up human capacity for more meaningful recognitive interactions. For example, GenAI might provide initial technical feedback on drafts, allowing teacher-student interactions to focus on higher-order concerns that benefit from mutual recognition. Similarly, GenAI might serve as a “sandbox” environment where students can experiment and build confidence before engaging in recognitive feedback relationships with peers and teachers.” This means that both the teacher and the students can offload the busy-work feedback to AI, and focus on the kind of feedback that actually benefits from having a relationship. The model is also useful to explain the importance of recognition in peer feedback: “When peer feedback attempts to replicate teacher-student dynamics, it often falters not due to peers’ lack of content knowledge, but because students do not recognize their peers as having the authority to recognize their scholarly development. Our framework suggests that successful peer feedback programs, by contrast, will be those which explicitly establish appropriate forms of mutual recognition between peers as co-developing scholars.”
Conceptually, I find this really useful. In terms of practice, I think building relationships of mutual recognition from the teacher side probably work along the lines of showing care and concern, and sensitivity to identity, as trust moves. But thinking about recognition also shows that we are working in a system that is really not conductive to good teaching. We meet too many students for too short periods of time to actually build relationships. Of course we can show care and concern and sensitivity to identity and of course it is important that we do (and even if we feel it, most of us can probably get better at actually showing it, too!), but most relationships are so short-lived just because of the way the system is organized that we cannot really accompany students on their way of becoming anything, we see them for two months and then they are gone. Imagine the impact feedback could have if we actually had more time for each student!
Anyway. Reading Corbin et al. (2026) article really changes how I will teach about feedback in the future. I used to work with the “sandwich” structure, which I then updated in that same post to neutral acknowledgment -> warning of a problematic aspect -> suggesting a solution; and if I have more time with Nicol & Macfarlane‐Dick (2006); but in any case really focussed on how to structure the information. While this is of course still useful, I think we really need to start out from the recognition and relationship side of things, and maybe even with the “four ears” before that. As Corbin et al. (2026) write: “When recognition holds, both students and teachers can act within a shared practice where words have consequence. When it fails, even the best feedback becomes noise. Pedagogical power, therefore, lies not in the accuracy of information but in the relationships that make information matter.”
Corbin, T., Tai, J., & Flenady, G. (2026). The pedagogical power of recognition in feedback. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-16.
Corbin, T., Tai, J., & Flenady, G. (2025). Understanding the place and value of GenAI feedback: a recognition-based framework. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50(5), 718-731.
Favourite picture spot!
Beautiful day!
Almost there!
Love the sea!
And walking back home…
Currently reading Laidlaw (2026): “When faculty ask, ‘what’s the point of teaching?’: GenAI as identity crisis, not skills gap” - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching says:
[…] for their own sake, but also because teacher anxiety leads to student anxiety, and that can lead to breakdown in the relationship as discussed earlier. And of course teachers who have gotten over the threshold already can better support students in […]