Feedback effects on students' writing motivation, process, and performance

Abstract

Many students’ writing capacities remain insufficient during college years (Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009). Teachers try to improve students’ writing skills by providing them with feedback on their texts. Remarkably, research on the effects of feedback provided on written products is scarce (Graham & Perin, 2007). Therefore, the research question addressed in this thesis is: Do feedback interventions exist that, through their content and/or formulation, contribute to students’ writing motivation, process, and performance? According to Feedback Intervention Theory (FIT; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) feedback directs attention to task-learning, task-motivation, or meta-task processes, and as a result feedback affects performance. FIT states that feedback cues that direct attention to task-learning and task-motivation processes generally enhance performance, while feedback cues that direct attention to meta-task processes generally reduce performance. A prerequisite for feedback to enhance performance is that students reflect on the feedback (cf. Anseel, Lievens, & Schollaert, 2009). Students must consider if and how they will use the feedback and how they will approach writing the subsequent draft. In this thesis, three kinds of feedback are examined in three respective studies. In two studies also the effects of a reflection assignment dealing with feedback use and the writing approach are investigated. The first study (chapter 4) deals with progress feedback (information that performance has improved since the last assignment). This feedback was hypothesized to contribute to students’ self-efficacy beliefs, mastery goal, and performance. The results show that progress feedback contributed to students’ self-efficacy beliefs, on the condition that a substantial amount of progress was communicated. Probably, it was the balance between progressed and not progressed aspects that mattered. The second study (chapter 5) focuses on feedback providing improvement strategies (procedures to complete the task) and reflection on feedback use (2 x 2 design). Feedback providing strategies was hypothesized to contribute to students’ self-efficacy beliefs, mastery goal, planning/revising, effort, and performance. Reflection on feedback use was hypothesized to contribute to planning/revising and performance. The results show that feedback providing strategies negatively affected students’ self-efficacy beliefs, especially if these beliefs were low prior to feedback. Feedback providing strategies positively contributed to students’ planning/revising and positively related to time investment. Students indicated that they perceived the provision of strategies as an underestimation of their capacities, but also as an indication that they should improve their text. Students’ performance gained from reflection on feedback use when they did not receive strategies. When they did receive strategies, this reflection was harmful to performance. The third study (chapter 6) deals with feedback posing questions (interrogative formulations) and reflection on feedback use (2 x 2 design). Feedback posing questions was hypothesized to contribute to students’ mastery goal, planning/revising, effort, and performance. The results show that feedback posing questions negatively affected students’ mastery goal. Possibly, the questions directed students’ attention to the teacher’s interest rather than their own interest. Planning/revising suffered from the reflection when the feedback was non-interrogative. Based on the results of the studies, chapter 7 provides recommendations for the refinement of FIT and suggestions for future research, and discusses practical implications.