LAUSR

Burm et al. designed and implemented an innovation focused on training and deploying medical personnel from one specialism to assess surgical trainees in another specialism [1]. A major finding from the focus group interview data was that learners questioned the credibility of the feedback providers and the constructiveness of the feedback messages. It seemed that learners desired more than an assessment of their competence, they wanted to see how their performance could be improved. For this to transpire, they felt they needed specialist advice from someone who had done similar operations many times before. As an educational researcher specializing in assessment and feedback, I find much to learn from varied traditions, cultures and perspectives offered by different disciplines. Whilst there are useful generic principles of assessment and feedback, tensions and compromises between generic and discipline-specific features of assessment and feedback practice loom large. There are learning cultures and feedback cultures at the heart of disciplinary practices [2]. A major challenge for assessment practice is that assessment always does double duty [3]: it needs to fulfil multiple functions. Most commonly, and relevant to the contribution of Burm et al., assessment needs to provide a fair appraisal of current achievement whilst at the same time contributing to ongoing development of the individual being assessed. Feedback information also does double duty [4]. Its functions include: justifying the grade awarded; offering commentary that may be helpful on future tasks; and providing an audit trail for quality assurance purposes. Feedback doing double duty seems