This paper situates dialogue with students about their learning (descriptive feedback) within the larger frame of reflection, examining how teachers involved in inservice teacher education have used descriptive feedback and noting its impact on their teaching and on students' learning. It presents case studies of teachers and describes the role of descriptive feedback, focusing on its purposes (e.g., gathering information about what students learned and how they learned it) and processes (descriptive feedback, which is reflection in action, is a very simple process on the surface which can occur after or in the midst of an activity or group of activities). Next, the paper discusses learning how to receive descriptive feedback, and it looks at three shifts in teachers' perspectives seen over the years: from seeing teaching, self, and the curriculum as primary to seeing students and their learning as central; from seeing students as people to be won over, or as adversaries, to seeing them as partners whose share in power is equal; and from seeing teaching as the cause of learning to seeing it as a response to learning. The paper concludes that descriptive feedback is part of the larger scheme of reflective practice. (Contains 38 references.) (SM)