PAI Educational Assessment Conference
8 to 9 April 2027
Singapore
Dr Anastasiya A. Lipnevich
Principal Measurement Scientist
National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), USA
Anastasiya Lipnevich, PhD, is Principal Measurement Scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), where she leads work on formative assessment and the learning sciences. Prior to joining NBME, she was Full Professor of Educational Psychology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she retains an academic affiliation and continues to supervise doctoral students.
Anastasiya holds master's degrees in Clinical Psychology (M.S.), Italian Language and Literature (M.A.), and Counseling Psychology (M.Ed.), and earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Learning, Cognition, and Development concentration) from Rutgers University, where her dissertation received the Excellence in Dissertation Award from the Graduate School of Education. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ.
Her honors include the New Investigator Award and Best Article Award from Division 3 (Experimental Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, and a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Surrey, United Kingdom. One of her articles (Lipnevich et al., 2023) was named among the ten most influential articles of 2024. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Trento (Italy), the University of Konstanz (Germany), the University of Otago (New Zealand), the University of Sydney (Australia), and the National Institute of Education (Singapore), among others, and has delivered numerous keynotes at conferences and congresses around the world.
Dr. Lipnevich is co-author or co-editor of five books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Her books include Psychosocial Skills and School Systems in the 21st Century (Springer, 2016), The Cambridge Handbook of Instructional Feedback (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Instructional Feedback: The Power, the Promise, the Practice (Corwin, 2023), Unpacking Students' Engagement with Feedback through Artefacts, Discourse, and Survey Findings (Routledge, 2023), and the forthcoming Classroom Feedback: Moving Beyond the Myths (Corwin, 2027).
Her research focuses on instructional feedback, formative assessment, alternative approaches to cognitive and non-cognitive assessment, and the role of psychosocial characteristics in academic and life success.
The Emotional Life of Feedback: Supporting
Student Learning and Well-Being
Feedback is one of the most powerful tools educators have to support learning, and one of the most likely to backfire. Decades of research show that how feedback is delivered, framed, and received shapes not only what students learn, but how they feel about themselves as learners. Feedback that is perceived as controlling, evaluative, or threatening can trigger defensiveness, anxiety, and disengagement, even when the content is accurate and well-intentioned. Feedback that is perceived as supportive and growth-oriented, by contrast, can strengthen motivation, emotion regulation, and a sense of psychological safety in the classroom.
This keynote examines the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral pathways through which students respond to feedback, drawing on research into how learners interpret, feel about, regulate their emotional reactions to, and act on the information they receive about their performance. The talk also considers the cognitive biases that shape how feedback is designed, including evidence of gender bias in feedback provision, and what these patterns mean for equity in the classroom. Particular attention is given to the conditions under which feedback supports rather than undermines well-being.
Practical implications for classroom and school-level practice will be discussed, including how educators can design feedback and assessment practices that foster emotion regulation, resilience, engagement, and flourishing rather than anxiety or discouragement for all students. The session will close with reflections on how school leaders can cultivate a culture where feedback is experienced as an act of support, which is a foundation for both learning and well-being.
Relevance to Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment: This session explores how feedback can be embedded across curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment to strengthen learning, well-being, and equitable participation. It considers how educators can design emotionally supportive, actionable feedback practices that help students interpret feedback productively, regulate emotional responses, and use assessment information to guide improvement.