How Constructive Is That Feedback? Associations With Undergraduates' Future Time Perspectives Moderated by Student Characteristics

• In Event: The Interplay of Feedback and Motivation: Perspectives on How Context, Student, and Feedback Characteristics Matter

Abstract

When a learner receives feedback, motivational processes are triggered that control how the learner re-engages in a learning activity and adjusts in response to what the feedback suggests (Fong et al., 2021). Although rarely examined in the feedback literature, future time perspective (FTP), or an individual’s beliefs about the future that inform decisions about the present (Shell & Husman, 2001), may be a salient motivational mechanism. Despite the growing literature on associations between FTP and academic outcomes (Kooij et al., 2018), less is known about how FTP dimensions relate to students’ perceptions of feedback. Most importantly, whether they see feedback as constructive is related to adaptive motivational processes as well as uptake (Winstone et al., 2017). In this study, we hypothesized that FTP would be related to whether learners deemed feedback as constructive and explored how individual difference factors such as gender and academic discipline would influence such processes.

In Phase 1, 48 U.S. undergraduates were asked to imagine receiving feedback on a paper written for a college course. Next, they rated 56 researcher-created feedback statements varying in levels of specificity (clear direction for improvement) and friendliness (encouraging comments), yielding four categories of feedback statements: specific-friendly, specific-unfriendly, unspecific-friendly, and unspecific-unfriendly. In Phase 2, 392 U.S. college students (57.8% female; major: 33.1% STEM, 25.7% Business, 26% Social Sciences, 15.2% Arts/Humanities) rated the Phase 1 statements on levels of constructiveness and completed two subscales of Husman and Shell’s (2008) Future Time Perspective scale: valence (relative importance of attaining long-term versus immediate outcomes; a = .80) and connectedness (contingent relationship between current behavior and future goal attainment; a = .86). For each feedback category, we tested a regression model evaluating whether FTP-valence, FTP-connectedness, sex, and major (and their interactions) predicted ratings of feedback constructiveness, controlling for students’ academic year and GPA.

Displayed in Block 1 of Table 1, our main findings were that FTP-connectedness was a positive predictor of constructiveness of statements with high specificity and a negative predictor for unspecific statements. This suggests that as learners viewed their current behavior as a strong determinant of their future, they rated feedback with specific directions to improve as more constructive. Interestingly, level of FTP-valence (seeing long-term goals as important) was positively linked with rating unspecific specific statements as constructive. Perhaps some learners high in FTP-valence may lack a system of proximal subgoals that promote the use of specific feedback as means of reaching their academic goals (Miller & Brickman, 2004).

As an exploratory step (Blocks 2-3 in Table 2), we examined interactions of FTP and individual difference factors (i.e., sex and major). For specific feedback statements, there was evidence of moderation by sex for the association between FTP-valence and constructiveness ratings. For unspecific statements, we also observed moderation by academic major.

Overall, learners’ perceptions of feedback constructiveness critically depended on their views of the future, and these associations were sensitive to students’ self-identified sex and academic discipline, suggesting that discipline- and gender-based socialization may influence the dynamic relationship between future-related motivational processes and feedback.

Authors

• Carlton J. Fong, Texas State University
  Presenting Author

• Diane L. Schallert, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shengjie Lin, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Servet Altan, MEF University
  Presenting Author