Feedback literacy has been phenomenally studied across research and practices in the past decade. However, the partnership in teacher and student feedback literacy (TFL and SFL) has been scarcely studied. As a response, this study explored the statistical relationship between TFL and SFL and the perceptions of feedback-literate students and teachers, using two parallel questionnaires’ data from 200 students and 20 teachers at a southwestern Chinese university. Analyses revealed mismatched understandings of the TFL and SFL (at micro and macro level) and a medium positive correlation between TFL and SFL (at meso and macro level). Such empirical evidence validates that student–teacher partnerships should be well foregrounded to improve their feedback literacy. Meanwhile, new empirical insights–‘awareness of the student–teacher partnership’ and ‘perception of the relationship between feedback and learning effects’–should be added to existing SFL frameworks.