Teachers' written feedback in English: How does this relate to the pathways leading towards self-regulated learning in 11-13 year olds

Keywords: MEA 2022
MEA

Self-regulated learning (SRL), which includes cognitive, metacognitive, behavioural, motivational and affective facets of learning, is widely associated with better educational outcomes. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to gain understanding into the nature of teachers’ written feedback given to 11-13 year-old students on pieces of extended writing in the subject of English, with particular focus on what proportion of feedback relates to SRL and how this feedback is associated with both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of their SRL abilities.
This quantitative study collected data from a convenience sample of four English teachers and 75 students (Years 7 and 8) attendant at a high socio-economic, boys-only, independent preparatory (8-13 years) school in England. A total of 2388 naturally-occurring teacher feedback comments were collected from student English exercise books, on 283 pieces of work completed prior to the study. The thematic content of individual, separate utterances of feedback comments was coded according to an adapted version of Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) four-level feedback model, incorporating aspects of Clark’s (2012) formative assessment model. This allowed for analysis of planning, monitoring and reflecting (metacognitive) and ambition, effort and persistence (self-efficacy) pathways from feedback about SRL, in addition to more general examination of feedback about the task, the processing of the task and the self as a person. Students’ perceptions of their SRL capabilities were measured using the widely-employed self-report Motivated Strategies for Learning questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich at el., 1991). A survey instrument was designed to capture teachers’ perceptions of students’ metacognitive self-regulation and self-efficacy, relative to other students they have taught previously, in similar contexts.
Most feedback was found to be about the task. Teachers gave high proportions of feedback about SRL (between one fifth and one quarter). Most comments related to SRL were linked to metacognitive pathways to SRL, rather than self-efficacy pathways. There were, however, notable differences between the two teachers in the contribution of individualmonitoring, reflecting, ambition and effort pathways. Findings suggest that the metacognitive and self-efficacy constructs are not as clearly defined as the framework implies.
Students reported medium or high levels of the SRL skills measured. Relationships were found between the types of feedback given and both students’ perceptions of their own SRL abilities and teachers’ perceptions of the students’ SRL abilities. Results suggest that teachers have a more accurate awareness of students’ self-efficacy than their metacognitive self-regulation, despite providing more feedback associated with the latter; indeed, when rating students, teachers were shown to poorly differentiate between these constructs.
Feedback was shown to be more closely associated with teachers’ perceptions of student SRL ability, than students’ own reflections, therefore more time could valuably be spent by teachers learning about their students’ characteristics, especially their aptitude for SRL, in order to provide a greater proportion of SRL-related feedback, that is constructively aligned with promoting individual students’ SRL.
Whilst there are important limitations to this study, including the small sample of teachers, highly standardised population and difficulties in categorising some feedback comments, it recommends that both the findings and feedback model are employed by teachers, school management and training providers. This would help to understand how feedback can be more effectively tailored to optimise pathways towards improved individual students’ SRL and how teacher professional knowledge might be developed to facilitate this.