Review of Dialogic Feedback in the Age of Algorithmic Governance: Key to PCP-Coaching and Assessment-as-Learning, by Filip Dochy et al.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v33.4635Abstract
Dialogic Feedback for High Impact Learning reframes feedback as a relational and dialogic process grounded in Assessment-as-Learning, offering a persuasive challenge to compliance-driven, transmission-based models of evaluation. This review examines the book's central contributions—dialogic feedback as relational practice, feedback literacy, and learner agency—alongside its limitations, including an underspecified audience and limited engagement with the sociotechnical conditions reshaping contemporary feedback systems. The review extends the dialogic framework into the domain of algorithmic governance, arguing that the three conditions Dochy and colleagues identify as essential to meaningful feedback—interpretive openness, relational accountability, and shared authority—are precisely those that AI-mediated evaluation systems tend to suppress. The book's most consequential contribution may be one it does not develop directly: it supplies the normative vocabulary needed to evaluate and challenge automated feedback infrastructures. Whether dialogic feedback can survive the turn toward automation is ultimately a question about power.
Author Biography
Pamela Capulong, East Texas A&M University
Pamela Capulong is a senior human resources leader, doctoral student, United States Air Force veteran, and lifelong educator dedicated to strengthening people, systems, and workplace culture. In her current role, she leads initiatives in employee relations, employee experience, HR operations, onboarding, supervisor development, and organizational support. Before entering HR leadership, Pamela built a strong foundation in public education as an elementary teacher, middle school teacher, campus librarian, and district-level administrator. Her military service and extensive experience in education reinforced her belief that strong organizations are built on trust, accountability, clarity, continuous learning, and genuine support for every employee. Pamela holds two master’s degrees from East Texas A&M University and is currently pursuing her doctorate.
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[Book reviewed] Dochy, F., Segers, M., & Arikan, S. (2022). Dialogic feedback for high impact learning: Key to PCP-coaching and assessment-as-learning. Routledge.
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