Inside out: The importance and necessity of assessing students’ self-perceptions of teacher feedback for harnessing the power of feedback

Although the impact of feedback on student achievement has been identified to be powerful (i.e., top 10 among over 100 influences relating to achievement, Hattie, 2009), students might respond to teacher feedback differently due to individual differences in terms of self-perceptions of feedback in multiple aspects. To harness the power of teacher feedback in student learning, it is meaningful to search for productive ways to help students to accept and use feedback effectively to promote learning. Awareness and assessment of individual differences in terms of students’ perceptions of teacher feedback are prerequisites or facilitators of harnessing teacher feedback. To address both, this study examined students’ individual differences in terms of four key feedback orientations(FOs). The four FOs are students’ self-perceptions of feedback pertaining to feedback usefulness, competence and responsibility to use teacher feedback to improve academic performance, and social awareness to use feedback for establishing/maintaining good student-teacher relationships. The relationships between these FOs and student engagement in learning were also tested given the role of engagement in improving learning. Participants were a sample of over three hundred secondary students in mainland China. Findings showed these variables were significantly and positively correlated with each other. A further regression analysis showed feedback usefulness is the strongest predictor of school engagement followed by responsibility, competence and social awareness to use feedback. Theoretical implications to the field of feedback research and practical implications of assessing and understanding students’ feedback orientations in developing effective feedback delivery strategies in classrooms to harness the power of teacher feedback on students’ engagement and academic achievement are discussed. Copyright © 2019 The 7th Int'l Psychology and Health Conference.