Feedback Conversations to Motivate Adolescent Girls’ Learning: Using Conversations to Progress Learning, Resilience, and Confidence · ICGS Research Library

Title

Feedback Conversations to Motivate Adolescent Girls’ Learning: Using Conversations to Progress Learning, Resilience, and Confidence

Author

Karen Lewis (2020)

Year Published

2020

Description

There is often a disconnect between the feedback teachers give and their students’ willingness or ability to apply that feedback to their own writing. Teachers understand, though, that the way they give feedback can impact student confidence and resilience. For girls as social learners who value relationships, some form of dialogue can help to facilitate uptake of feedback and potentially support confidence and resilience. There is not an extensive body of research, however, that explores the experiences of feedback specifically for adolescent girls. In response to this, action research on student engagement with feedback was undertaken in a large all-girls’ school in Brisbane, Australia. A group of thirty-six Year 11 English Literature students engaged in feedback conversations to encourage clarification of feedback and self-evaluation of their work. Feedback conversation transcripts, student surveys, focus group discussions, and student grades were used to find the impact of such conversations on student confidence, uptake of feedback, and improvement to their writing. Those students who engaged with feedback conversations reported feeling positive about their own learning, having improved confidence towards their potential exam performance, being more receptive to feedback, and had an increase in overall grades under exam conditions. Further research on the impact of prolonged use of feedback conversations is warranted, especially related to student confidence, resilience, and writing performance.