Students' Affective Reactions and Cognitive Understanding of Classroom Mistakes and Related Feedback

• In Event: Being Wrong (Sometimes): How Students’ Classroom Assessment Mistakes and Learning Errors Enhance Learning and Motivation

Abstract

The objective of the present research was to investigate the mental or ‘working’ models K-6 students generate in response to teacher-based feedback about student mistakes in the classroom. Given well-known findings about the inconsistent use of feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), it is imperative to consider how students respond emotionally and cognitively to teacher-based feedback about classroom mistakes in order to enhance feedback delivery and student uptake.

The present research was informed by the Learning Errors and Formative Feedback (LEAFF) model (author, 2013). The LEAFF model is a learning and assessment framework designed to inform and support (a) classroom learning interventions to facilitate student achievement, (b) teacher-student trust and wellbeing during the learning process, and (c) healthy learning outcomes, including mastery goals, engagement, and deep academic learning and achievement.

With the consent of parents and school administrators, an experimental study was conducted with 42 assenting children (21 boys and 21 girls) at a K-6 elementary school in a large Metropolitan City. All children participated in one-on-one cognitive laboratories in which a computer-based storybook called Fiona’s Feedback Adventure was presented to the child. There were two different conditions associated with the story book: (1) Fiona responds incorrectly to a teacher-posed question and receives subsequent teacher-based feedback on the incorrect answer; and (2) Fiona responds correctly to the teacher-posed question and receives subsequent teacher-based feedback on the correct answer. The 42 children were randomly assigned to participate in one of the two storybook conditions, balanced for gender. A series of questions were posed to all children as the story was presented to probe for their affective and cognitive reactions, including their predictions of how Fiona would perform on a final test, and recommendations for feedback. Children’s achievement scores in all subject areas were collected as well.

Students’ interview responses were audio-recorded and analyzed. Preliminary analysis of children’s responses indicates that children exposed to the story condition in which Fiona makes a mistake were more likely to reveal negative emotions in light of teacher-based feedback; this was especially the case for younger children. This was observed even when the teacher feedback did not include direct mention of the mistake made. Furthermore, these children were more likely to predict that Fiona’s mistake, despite the feedback, would lead to poor subsequent test performance. The opposite pattern was generally observed for children exposed to the study condition in which Fiona does not make a mistake. Children made recommendations for how they wished feedback to be communicated by teachers.

This research builds on empirical and theoretical efforts to understand how students’ mistakes can be educationally useful and how to better equip students to receive feedback on mistakes. Although there is agreement that feedback is essential to learning and performance, very little is actually known about how students respond emotionally and cognitively to feedback. Without taking students’ perspective into consideration, teacher feedback may be misunderstood and not applied to the correction of mistakes.

Author

• Jacqueline P. Leighton, University of Alberta