The Next Black Box: Seventh-Grade English Language Arts Students' Internal Mechanisms of Feedback Processing

• In Event: Got Feedback? New Perspective, Practices, and Possibilities for Revitalizing Inquiry Into Assessment for Learning

Abstract

In this session, we shift our attention from feedback as something given to feedback as something received. After Black and Wiliam (1998) shined a light into the black box of the classroom and identified formative assessment as a way to raise standards of achievement, a large body of research revealed the influence of feedback on learning. Not all such influences were positive, however, which created a need for closer examinations of the nature of feedback. Attempts to explain these inconsistencies have also led to a call for research on how students respond to and subsequently use formative feedback from an external source. We call this the next black box.
We explore this next black box by introducing the model of the internal mechanisms of feedback processing (IMFB), which was designed based on a review of existing feedback models and literature on students’ emotions, conceptions, and perceptions of feedback. This model emphasizes the hypothesized cognitive and affective mechanisms of assessment information processing, including emotions elicited by and interpretations of feedback and feedback-informed decisions about next steps. This model also represents the hypothesized ways initial motivational states drive how students respond to feedback and the role that external and contextual factors play (Lui & Andrade, 2022a).
Following an introduction to the IMFB, we share a study in which this model was used to explore how 7th grade ELA students understand and process formative feedback and how they plan to use this information to inform next steps. Relationships among these processes and students’ initial motivational states were also explored. Survey data were collected from 93 students of a 7th grade English/Language Arts teacher who employed formative assessment practices. The results indicate that students tended to have positive emotions and judgments in response to their teacher’s feedback and make controllable attributions. They generally made informative meaning of the feedback and constructive decisions about next steps. Correlational findings showed that (1) emotions, judgments, meaning-making, and attributions are related; (2) judgments of and the meaning that students made about the feedback were most strongly related to decision-making about the next steps; and (3) task value was the only motivation variable related to responses to feedback (Lui & Andrade, 2022b).
We conclude this presentation with implications for research and practice based on the expected and unexpected findings from the study and, more broadly, implications for using this model as a framework for empirical studies that could contribute to the emerging perspective on feedback as something received.

Authors

• Angela M. Lui, CUNY - School of Professional Studies
  Presenting Author

• Heidi L. Andrade, University at Albany - SUNY
  Non-Presenting Author