Feedback literacy as multilingual literacy: negotiating norms and identities across EFL and ESL policy ecologies

This study reconceptualizes peer feedback literacy (PFL) as a multilevel practice situated within multilingual academic ecologies. Extending Carless and Boud’s (2018) model, it incorporates multilingual socialisation, identity positioning, and institutional mediation to explain how learners internalise peer feedback in EFL (China) and ESL (Malaysia) contexts, focusing on academic writing pedagogy. A longitudinal mixed-methods design integrated questionnaire data, coded peer comments, revision analysis, and semi-structured interviews. Repeated-measures ANOVA and ANCOVA revealed significant improvements in learners’ feedback engagement (e.g. large effects for EFL learners in ‘Taking Action,’ η² = 0.32, p < .01), while qualitative analysis illuminated their evolving academic identities and agentive participation. EFL learners, initially constrained by hierarchical norms, gradually adopted advisory feedback, while ESL learners demonstrated stable fluency. The study shows that PFL is a socially negotiated literacy shaped by pedagogy, identity, and policy. It advocates for culturally responsive feedback practices and teacher education to promote inclusive participation across diverse policy contexts.