Factors that influence Feedback

It has been mentioned in the prior literature (e.g., Huber & Seidel, 2018; Narciss et al., 2014) that not all students are equally receptive to feedback. Narciss et al. (2014) stated that students may differ from each other, as for instance in motivational states such as self-efficacy (Caffarella & Barnett, 2000; Ekholm et al., 2015) and goal-orientation (Butler, 1993; VandeWalle & Cummings, 1997; Shin, Lee, & Seo, 2017). Thus, feedback may be processed differently by each student which could in turn vary in the impact on feedback outcome.

Furthermore, a positive and supportive instructor-student relationship helps to facilitate the cognitive and affective development in student learning and it is one of the most important factors influencing the quality of higher education (Kim, 2016). When instructors respect and support their students, there is a higher possibility that the trust

towards instructor is likely to be enhanced which possibly lead students to accept the feedback they receive.

Increasing studies (e.g., Carless et al., 2020; Fyfe et al., 2021) are investigating effective feedback types across a variety of disciplines that aims to find feedback practices in accordance with the specific contexts.

The following discusses factors that may influence the outcomes when receiving feedback.

2.8.1. Student Characteristics

Educational teachers interact with students who demonstrate a wide variety of characteristics such as self-efficacy (Handley et al., 2011; Sherf & Morrison, 2020) and goal-orientation (Winstone, Hepper, & Nash, 2021). According to Bandura (1996), self-efficacy is a primary source of influence on motivation, and it is associated with learner’s choice of how much effort and persistence will be spent on a task. Some students with high self-efficacy may perceive feedback as an opportunity for further development while others with low self-efficacy may be discouraged to accept the feedback. In fact, feedback seeking behavior is likely to be higher when self-efficacy is high (Ashford et al., 2003). Some scholars theorized that learners with high self-efficacy might be more motivated to persist and engage with feedback (Handley et al., 2011;

Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Ekholm et al. (2015) investigated writing self-efficacy with 115 undergraduate students enrolled in education and english courses, and found that students’ perceptions of the feedback partially mediated self-efficacy in writing. Thus, students who perceived the feedback as positive, tended to have higher self-efficacy.

Findings from prior research (e.g., Caffarella & Barnett, 2000; Ekholm et al., 2015) implied that teachers’ should invest an effort for students to perceive feedback as helpful for their learning.

Studies suggest that learning motivation, such as goal orientation of individuals influences the behavior of feedback seeking (VandeWalle & Cummings, 1997; Gong et al., 2014). Goal orientation refers to individual’s reasons to engage in achievement situations (Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Two broad classes are identified in

defining the goals that individuals pursue (VandeWalle, 2003) that are the mastery goal and performance goal. Both mastery and performance goals are divided into approaching motives and avoidance motives (Winstone et al., 2021). Mastery and performance goal orientations refer to two distinctive patterns of how one interprets and responds to achievement situations (VandeWalle, 2003). An individual with a mastery goal orientation, there is a possibility to see feedback as useful for learning than one with performance goal orientation, viewing feedback as a judgement about oneself (Park &

Sohn, 2020). Thus, one with high performance goal orientation may perceive feedback as a threat to the self-esteem.

Taken together, students’ levels should be taken into consideration when providing feedback (Narciss et al., 2014). For teachers, knowledge of student self-efficacy or/and goal orientation is vital. The need to explore student characteristics is increasingly important in that it helps teachers to identify which feedback should be provided (Narciss et al., 2014) suited to each individual.

To sum up, there are differential effects of various characteristics of feedback, and it seems to be related under particular individual contexts. Furthermore, students’ affective and motivational characteristics seem to be most related to the feedback valence, which are defined as positive and negative feedback in the literature (e.g., Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).

2.8.2. Instructor-Student Relationship

Several studies highlighted the relational aspects and suggested to explore the embedded relational connections during the feedback process (e.g., Carless, 2012;

Carless, 2019; Dowden et al., 2013; Kim, 2005; Lee & Schallert, 2008; Pokorny &

Pickford, 2010) because if feedback is the driver for student learning, the drives are partly reinforced by instructor-student relationship in which instructors play a vital role in creating interpersonal relationship. As Kulhavy (1977) has earlier noted, feedback itself may not be powerful to initiate any further action by a student. Thus, it has to

be considered that feedback per se is not the sole cause of a successful learning outcome. For instance, Wubbels and Levy (1993) accounted that instructor-student relationships were related to students’ perceptions of the classroom environment. In the classroom context, positive experience about the relationships with their instructors coincided with the perception of the classroom environment.

Taken together, the instructor-student relationship plays a key role in the quality of instruction in higher education. It seems that it similarly applies to the perception of the feedback process in students. Poulos and Mahony (2008) acknowledged that feedback was not an independent feature, but it was rather related with student perceptions of the instructors. Several scholars stated that a trusting relationship between instructor and student needs to be established, for feedback to be accepted by students (Carless & Boud, 2018; Kim, 2005; Lee & Schallert, 2008). Kim (2005) investigated instructor-student interactions in online assignment process and found that although students acknowledged the value of feedback on their tasks, students’ trust played a decisive role on how they perceived the feedback. Consistent with the findings, Carless (2012) suggested that “Trusting virtues such as empathy, tact and a genuine willingness to listen are ways in which positive feedback messages can flourish and more critical ones be softened” (p. 90). Thus, feedback is influenced by the relationship between the instructor and student, and a supportive atmosphere seems to be essential for students to accept the feedback. The case study of Steen-Utheim and Wittek (2017) was conducted qualitatively using audio recordings of feedback dialogues, field notes, and classroom observations, with the findings that the instructor showed respect to students providing supportive comments (‘I believe in you’) that facilitated students’ trust, encouraging their engagement with feedback. Despite the environment of higher education due to the limited time and space, feedback studies (e.g., Carless, 2019;

Steen-Utheim & Wittek, 2017) emphasized the importance of interpersonal relationship between instructor-student relationship, and interactive feedback was found to promote the relationship between the instructor and students. If the feedback practice is a part of effective teaching, the aspects of teacher’s beliefs, knowledge, behavior and the relationship with the student should all be taken into account to describe the qualities of a good teacher (Kim, 2005).

2.8.3. Feedback across Disciplines

Feedback is situated within the various practices of disciplines (Carless et al., 2020).

Literature has widely researched feedback in the following settings: education management (e.g., Ilies, Pater, & Judege, 2007), physical education (e.g., Lee, Keh, &

Magill, 1993; Petranek, Bolter, & Bell, 2019), liberal arts (e.g., Schrand & Eliason, 2012), L1 and L2 classroom (e.g., Kim & Paek, 2016; Lee & Schallert, 2008), psychology (e.g., Cretu & Negovan, 2012; Moreno, 2004), science (e.g., Brown &

Glover, 2006; Fernández-Toro, Truman, & Walker, 2013), teacher education (e.g., Dowden, 2013), and medical education (e.g., Archer, 2010). Instructors are often found to fail to use general feedback in their practice that suits to their disciplines (Carless et al., 2020) because the differences of effective feedback across various disciplines have not been widely studied yet. Fernández-Toro et al. (2013) analyzed 4,000 written feedback comments of teachers from language and technology disciplines. The result revealed that 41% of the comments from teachers in technology classes referred to the content and 32% were motivational comments. Written feedback from language class teachers showed that 75% of the teachers referred to skills development and 16% of the comments were motivational. Comparing the types of comments from these two teaching disciplines, one can see that corrective feedback focusing on immediate improvement in fluency, speaking, and writing is preferred by the language sector.

whereas the technology sector focuses more on illustrating common misconceptions of the learning content with suggestions for future improvement.

Carless et al.’s (2020) qualitative study examined how feedback was provided in four different academic subjects: architecture, education, engineering, and medicine. The teacher of the architecture class expressed that feedback was most effective as a teacher-student or student-student dialogue throughout the work in progress. Feedback was less about what was right or wrong and more about developing a discussion whereby better answers and new ideas could be generated. Students of the education class welcomed feedback comments on outlines or drafts that they could use to improve their grades, that is, feedback was valued if it was usable for future assignments. Interviews with engineering students revealed that they received only their

grades without particular feedback. Thus, feedback was provided less in the engineering culture. Students also seemed to prefer peer learning over teacher feedback as peers were more approachable for receiving feedback than teachers. In the case of medicine, problem-based learning tutorials were common activities and served as the only feature of the medical curriculum where feedback was provided. It was a common process for students to write reflective essays about their learning after receiving evaluative feedback through student e-portfolios. Medical students generally valued personalized feedback that was specific and guiding, which highlighted alternative ways of performing a medical procedure.

Therefore, different academic disciplines used different feedback methods. Even though there is this distinction, there is an underlying commonality that students not only appreciate but also pursue interactions with their teachers. Feedback-seeking behavior clearly resides in students, and the interactional feedback process is seen as vital throughout the academic subjects.