In this paper, Prof. Karen Douglas examines the effect of different types of feedback on pupils' performance. This project also examines teachers' views of intelligence and their role in the classroom. The findings have important implications for educators as well as social policy.
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Feedback influences learning, affects performance, emotion regulation and student satisfaction. In this research, types of feedback and teachers’ views of intelligence were examined.
There are two ways how feedback can be delivered. Person forms of feedback attribute the outcome to stable factors such as ability levels (e.g., “you’re really good at maths”). In contrast, process form of feedback attributes the outcome to student’s effort, and other unstable factors (e.g., “you tried really hard at this”). Research shows that children display more positive affect, persistence, and improved performance in future in they receive process feedback after failure.
Praise is common and used to maintain children’s behaviour and academic motivation while criticism signals when the required standard has not been achieved. Research strongly suggests that teachers prefer to deliver praise over criticism. However, there is very little research examining how much teachers use person and process forms of praise.
Teacher’s view of intelligence is strongly linked to person feedback and process feedback. Person forms of feedback can promote view of intelligence as a fixed trait (entity theory). Process forms of feedback however, promote the belief that intelligence can grow and change (incremental theory of intelligence).
This research was interested in how teachers choose to deliver feedback and specifically whether they deliver person (ability) or process (effort) feedback.
Research Objectives
• To examine the type of feedback (process vs. person) that teachers would say they would deliver following scenarios presenting successes and failures.
Programme & Methodology:
Study 1
• 169 Chinese Primary school English teachers (N=169).
• Teachers read vignettes depicting children’s educational successes and failures
• After each scenario, teachers were asked to rate how difficult the task was and how likely they would be to give feedback.
• They were then given an example of person feedback and an example of process feedback.
• They were asked to rate how likely they would be to deliver each to the student.
• Teachers also completed measures of their theory of intelligence.
Findings:
• Teachers were more likely to give praise than criticism and more likely to give feedback for tasks perceived to be more challenging.
• Following success, teachers endorsed the use of person and process feedback interchangeably, while following failure they endorsed more process feedback.
• If teachers viewed intelligence more as a fixed trait (entity theory) they did not give more praise following success. However, their view was associated with giving more person and process praise and less process criticism following failure.
Impact:
Important implications for policy makers and educators.
• Suggest need to develop extra training for teachers on the importance of and ways to effectively deliver feedback.
• Important that teachers consider the longer term impact of their praise. Even small amounts of person praise may be damaging.
• Teachers may use more encouraging statements to ensure students focus on their future performance, rather than criticism which directs attention to current performance.
New and important contributions to research