Exploring the relationships between peer feedback and achievement emotions among university students

Based on the control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006), feedback in education has been documented as one of important environmental factors that may largely influence students’ achievement emotions (e.g., enjoyment, hope, anxiety, and boredom). However, the existing literature of feedback research focuses more on teacher feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007) rather than peer feedback. Recently, a growing body of studies argue that peer feedback, especially peer feedback provision from classmates would also be beneficial to student learning engagement and outcomes, apart from teacher feedback. However, key questions like: How effective students would perceive peer feedback in enhanced learning? How do they feel in learning-related achievement situations?, have not been explicitly tested in understanding the role of peer feedback in promoting learning. This pilot study aimed to test the relationships between students’ perceived effectiveness of peer feedback in supporting their learning and their achievement emotions (i.e., enjoyment, hope, boredom, and anxiety) in learning situations. Participants were 48 undergraduate students in Hong Kong. These students came from two classes of a general education course in an academic year. The results showed significantly positive correlations between peer feedback and positive emotions, whereas negative correlations with negative emotions. This indicates an important role of effective peer feedback in affecting students’ positive emotions. Implications and limitation of this pilot study are also discussed. Copyright © 2017 WERA-HKERA.