“You must learn something during a lesson”: how primary students construct meaning from teacher feedback

ABSTRACT

Teacher feedback can be described as a complex interactional pattern between teacher and student. Formative outcomes of assessment are considered to be enhanced when students understand aims and criteria. In order to better understand the processes of teacher feedback and to improve teaching and classroom assessment, there is a need for research on students’ perspectives on feedback. The present study aims to conceptualise how primary-school students construct meaning from teacher feedback. The study was based on focus group interviews with 23 students in grades 2 and 3 (7–9 years old). Constructivist grounded theory was used throughout the study. According to the findings, primary-school students conceptualise teacher feedback as communicating a lot of “musts”, centred on learning, involving what the students perceived as things they must learn and what they must do in order to learn. These musts concerned both academic learning and behavioural issues, including tensions between different musts.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom assessment
• grounded theory
• primary school
• student conceptions
• teacher feedback

1. Introduction

Teacher feedback can be described as a complex interactional pattern between teachers and students (Charon 2009) that is strongly linked to classroom assessment (Torrance and Pryor 1998). The formative outcomes of assessment are improved when students understand the aims and criteria of the assessment (Hattie and Timperley 2007), yet research on students’ experiences and perceptions of teacher feedback is not that common (Hargreaves 2013). Not only is research about students’ perspectives on feedback rare, but a significant percentage of this research has focused on higher education (e.g., Evans and Waring 2011; Lipnevich and Smith 2009). The younger the students are, the fewer studies there seem to be. The current study has therefore focused on the meanings that younger students associate with teacher feedback in order to contribute a deeper understanding of the social and learning processes that teacher feedback seems to evoke among primary-school students.

According to a symbolic interactionist framework (Blumer 1969; Charon 2009), how individuals define situations and interpret other participants’ acts has a strong influence on them and their actions. As an example, a common finding in studies of students’ perspectives on feedback is that they value it largely based on its perceived helpfulness (e.g., Hargreaves 2013; Murtagh 2014; Williams 2010). Additionally, previous studies have shown that middle school students prefer descriptive feedback (Murtagh 2014), and consider feedback that reminds and feedback containing enough, but not too much, information to be most supportive for their learning (Hargreaves 2013). In both Hargreaves (2013) and Murtagh’s (2014) observation- and interview-based studies, the students reported that they did not learn especially well if teacher feedback was too directive. While the students in these studies agreed on what kind of feedback they preferred, Williams (2010), who analysed questionnaire and interview data, found that, even though students wanted the kind of feedback that they perceived as most helpful in order to improve, they had different ideas about what kind of feedback that was.

Helpfulness also seems to be crucial regarding how students value teacher praise. For instance, in Burnett and Mandel (2010) and Murtagh’s (2014) studies, students reported that non-targeted praise such as a “good” might feel nice, but was unhelpful because it did not help them progress. However, students interviewed by Hargreaves (2013) reported that the feelings evoked by what they experienced as positive or negative feedback, including criticism and praise, could strengthen or undermine their motivation, and consequently could have either beneficial or adverse effects on their learning. Additionally, Burnett and Mandel (2010) found that what primary-school students wanted to be given praise for varied with age. Younger students favoured acknowledgement for effort, while older students appreciated praise for ability.

In a few studies, researchers have asked students to describe the kinds of feedback they received from their teachers. Tunstall and Gipps (1996) found that grade 1 and 2 students mainly described evaluative feedback, but also gave examples of descriptive teacher feedback, such as communicating standards, discussing strategies, and correcting errors. In a study of lower-secondary students’ perspectives on classroom feedback, Gamlem and Smith (2013) found additional forms of classroom feedback, such as reporting and grading. Meanwhile, Peterson and Earl Irving (2008) revealed that secondary students’ conceptions of the assessment and feedback they received were connected to their own individual needs and interests; for instance, a desire for teacher guidance.

Some studies emphasised students’ reliance on their teachers. For instance, the students in Gipps and Tunstall (1998; Tunstall and Gipps, 1996) and Hargreaves (2013) studies stressed the need to make an effort in order to learn. According to Gipps and Tunstall (1998), this echoed the voices of their teachers. These findings are in line with Harris, Brown, and Harnett (2014), according to whom primary- and secondary-school students consider their teachers’ relative expertise in the subject to be a guarantee that they can help them to learn. Additionally, Torrance and Pryor (1998) found that 4–7-year-old students (who, due to their age, have difficulties in distinguishing good work from poor work and in telling ability, difficulty, and effort apart) either compared their new performances with previous ones or fully relied on teacher feedback on the quality of their work.

Almost twenty years ago, Sadler (1998) emphasised the lack of knowledge about how students interpret and make use of teacher feedback. According to Hargreaves (2013), Ruiz-Primo and Li. (2013) and the present review of the literature, there are still surprisingly few studies on this issue, in particular studies that give a voice to younger students. Students’ control over their own learning varies (Hattie and Timperley 2007). According to symbolic interactionism, situations are interpreted and acted upon based on previous experiences (Charon 2009). Thus, it is reasonable to assume that primary-school students (some of them probably still trying to find their role as students) have conceptions of school and aims for being in school that differ from those of older students (cf. Mayall 2002), and thus they might also understand teachers’ feedback differently.

The aim of the present study was to explore and conceptualise how primary-school students construct meaning from directly communicated teacher feedback in the classroom. We examined what the main concern in teacher feedback was, as understood by primary-school students. In the current study, we drew on Hattie and Timperley (2007) construct of feedback, where feedback is used as an umbrella term consisting of feedback (i.e. response to achieved results), feed up (i.e. communicating goals), and feed forward (i.e. emphasising what the students have to do in order to work towards those goals).

2. Method

2.1. Participants

The study was carried out at a small Swedish primary school in a socioeconomically mixed rural environment and with a homogeneous Swedish ethnicity. Twenty-three students (11 boys and 12 girls; 7–9 years old) in grades 2 and 3 participated in the study. Informed consent was given by all the children and their parents. Fictitious names have been used to ensure participant confidentiality.

2.2. Data collection

Constructivist grounded theory was adopted throughout the study, with data collection and analysis being conducted in parallel, findings and questions arising during the analysis guiding further data collection, and initial induction passing to abduction (Charmaz 2014). The data for the current study were derived from a qualitative field research project. Focus group interviews were conducted by the first author with seven groups of students (three to four students per group). We chose the focus group interview method in order to reduce the power imbalance between the researcher and the young participants. In focus group interviews, participants outnumber the researcher and “the responsibility for responding to questions is shared by the group” (Horner 2000, 512), in contrast to individual interviews. The teachers suggested which students would together form the focus groups. The first author and the teacher then discussed the structures within the groups, and endeavoured to ensure that every student would feel comfortable in his or her group.

Before the focus group interviews, the first author conducted classroom observations and fieldwork at the school, in which she spent several days with the students, not only in classrooms, but also during lunchtimes and breaks. Blending in with the students at their level in their social worlds and encouraging them to accept the researcher as one of their own helped her to take the role of a “least-adult” (Mayall 2008).

At the beginning of each focus group interview, the students gave their informed consent, and were reminded that they were free to withdraw at any time. They were also assured that what they said would be treated confidentially and would not be passed on to their teacher or anyone else. During the interviews, one boy became tired and chose to leave 15 minutes into the focus group interview.

The focus group interviews started with an open question about what it was like to be a student and what they did at school. Topics then covered what the students perceived as being expected of them at school and during lessons and how this was communicated by the teacher, what the criteria were for learning and knowing as the students interpreted their teacher’s feedback, how the students received help from the teacher, what kind of help they received, and how they used it. The interviewer adopted an active listening approach with probing and follow-up questions. A semi-structured interview guide was used, working as a checklist and listing mainly topics and broad questions. Previous observations in the classrooms, on which another study has already been published (Eriksson, Boistrup, and Thornberg 2017), served as the source of questions for the interview guide. We wanted to be sensitive to the students’ language and understandings, and thus to avoid using terms that would be unfamiliar to them (cf. Mayall 2008), or risk affecting the students’ relations with their teachers by making them more aware of the assessment that takes place in the classroom (cf. Alderson and Morrow 2011). For this reason, the interviewer did not introduce the terms “assessment” or “feedback” during the interviews.

The lengths of the focus group interviews ranged from 23 to 48 minutes. Three interviews were interrupted by the students noticing that their peers had gone out for a break. The interviewer then suggested that they should also take a break, and, if they wanted, come back and continue the interview afterwards. In all cases the students went out to play and then continued the focus group interview. These became the longest interviews, and also meant that no sitting lasted longer than 28 minutes without a pause.

2.3. Analytical process

The data analysis was accomplished through initial, focused, and theoretical coding (Charmaz 2014), constant comparisons, theoretical sampling, and memo writing (Charmaz 2014; Glaser and Strauss 1967), which are described in more detail below. Pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, and the sociology of childhood were used as overall theoretical perspectives. Hence, the students were recognised as active agents who interpreted and constructed meaning from the assessment and feedback they experienced and encountered through classroom interactions (Charmaz 2014; Charon 2009; Lee 2001).

During the initial coding of interview data, we repeatedly found fragments in which, in different ways, students emphasised that their teachers told them that they must do things. Codes (such as “unhelping” and “calm creating”) were described and developed through memo writing, in which thoughts on patterns in the data were elaborated upon. Mind maps were created (which eventually led to Figure 1) in which the relationships between musts were visualised. Through constant comparisons (going back and staying close to the data throughout the analyses), the codes were elaborated upon and the coding became more focused. In parallel with focused coding and at the end of the analytical process, we adopted theoretical coding, which means that we analysed the relationships between different codes and constructed a pattern that conceptualises relationships between the codes and illustrates how primary-school students construct meaning from directly communicated teacher feedback in the classroom. During the theoretical coding, Glaser’s (1978) theoretical code families, the six C’s (the most common code family, containing the codes “causes”, “contexts”, “contingencies”, “consequences”, “covariances” and “conditions”, with variations within the respective codes), and the means-goal family (a sub-family to the six C’s, adding codes such as “goal”, “means” and “purpose”), served as helpful tools. Sayings such as “You must learn something during a lesson” and descriptions of work having to be “neat” and “correct” were analysed as the students experiencing that their teachers emphasised means and goals in their feedback interaction. “You can’t, you know, pretend to read” was interpreted as a description of a consequential behaviour that students had to adapt to in order to meet those means and goals. Hence, “If you’ve made a really big mistake, then you’ll have to redo everything” was interpreted as redoing being an anticipated consequence of not doing things correctly. Although the constructed categories all have their own specific characteristics, in accordance with the prototype model of categorisation (see Dey 1999), some of these categories overlap to some degree, which is not unusual in grounded theory studies (Charmaz 2014; Dey 1999).

Figure 1. How primary-school students construct meaning of teacher feedback.

3. Findings

When the primary-school students discussed classroom interactions that we understood as teacher feedback (Hattie and Timperley 2007), the Swedish word “måste” was prominent and frequently used. In English, “måste” corresponds to both “must” and “have to”. During the interviews, the students talked about things they had to do, and things they must do. In particular, they reported that they, as students, must learn things but also must do things in order to fulfil that must. Neither “have tos” nor “musts” would be entirely inclusive when translating the Swedish in vivo code “måsten” (plural noun) into English. However, as “must” sounds closer to the Swedish “måste”, and works best as a plural noun, we decided to use “musts” as the translated in vivo code, and an umbrella term for “have to” and “must”, which are both present in the excerpts. The translation of teacher feedback into student understanding appeared to be learning as a must as the main message of teacher feedback interpreted by the students. From teacher feedback, a boy in grade 2 made the following observation:

Per:

You must learn something during a lesson.

Interviewer:

Aha?

Per:

It’s a rule that you must learn something during a lesson.

In this excerpt, Per emphasised that there was a rule about constant learning. A recurrent pattern in the students’ interpretations of their teachers’ feedback was the message of learning musts, both about what they must learn, the mains and goals, and about what they must do in order to learn, the consequential behaviour (see Figure 1).

Learning musts were communicated by the teachers as goals (feed up), as expectations regarding what the students had to do to work towards those goals (feed forward), and as reactions concerning academic and behavioural performances (feedback). However, what the students must learn and what they must do to achieve such learning musts were not always clear to them. There were also tensions between musts as understood by the students.

3.1. You must learn things

In the initial excerpt, Per stressed that students must learn “something”. However, the students seemed to have only vague images of what they must learn. Nevertheless, they described how, through different kinds of feedback, their teachers implicitly or explicitly emphasised knowledge requirements, and, more or less explicitly related to those, gave feedback on the students’ knowledge and performances.

3.1.1 There are knowledge requirements

David in grade 2 explained, “It has to be neat, all the letters have to be turned in the right direction, because now we’re in the second grade.” David stressed implicit knowledge requirements by comparing (unofficial) standards for different grades. Students in grade 3 reported that their teacher stressed subject-related learning goals in her feedback.

Cecilia:

Stina [teacher] often says there are knowledge requirements.

Interviewer:

Aha, all right.

Cecilia:

But when it comes to, like some things, then she usually says things like, “This isn’t a knowledge requirement.” But in the homework, it can be written down that it’s a knowledge requirement that you’re supposed to know.

(Student, grade 3)

According to Cecilia, her teacher often informed the students of explicit knowledge requirements in terms of curriculum goals regulating what they must learn (feed up). When asked how they received information about knowledge requirements, some students did not know; others said that the teacher usually referred to the requirements at the beginning of lessons, when presenting a new task, or, as Cecilia described in the excerpt, as written information in homework (feed forward). The students also reported that they received information on what was required of them through correcting feedback, in which the teacher stressed standards; for instance, “In maths, counting to a thousand. That’s a knowledge requirement.” (Alfons, grade 3).

3.1.2. Knowing about what you know

The teachers were described as giving feedback on what students knew and the quality of students’ performances in various ways, more or less explicitly related to knowledge requirements. According to the students, receiving teacher feedback in the form of confirmation or praise was the most certain way of knowing (a) whether they had achieved the required knowledge, and (b) the quality of their performance. Lisa first expressed uncertainty when asked how she knew about the quality of her performance, but then referred to teacher feedback as the only way to know.

Lisa:

Don’t know.

Interviewer:

You don’t know?

Lisa:

No.

Interviewer:

You do things and then you don’t know whether it’s good or bad?

Lisa:

No.

Interviewer:

Aha, all right.

Lisa:

Only when Linn [the teacher] tells me.

Interviewer:

When Linn tells you? All right.

Lisa:

Mm, then I know.

(Student, grade 2)

Most students expressed uncertainty about self-assessing the quality of their own performances. Furthermore, if the teacher’s assessment of a performance, as displayed through feedback, differed from their self-assessment, the teacher’s opinion was perceived as being the valid one. The students interpreted teacher praise as confirmation of both academic and behavioural performances. Several students reported that teacher praise evoked positive emotions, such as feeling “happy” and “proud”.

Students interpreted teacher praise not only as confirming, but also as something that motivated them to continue doing what they were doing. However, some students explained that they did not appreciate praise much, and in fact often perceived it as insincere and, hence, unhelpful. While some students reported that they received a lot of teacher praise, there were others who reported a lack of praise, or what could be called “unpraise”; in other words, they never, or very seldom, received praise from their teachers.

Ella:

Well, it’s like this … I rarely get praise.

Lisa:

Same for me.

Ella:

I get unpraise.

Interviewer:

Do you miss praise?

Ella:

I think you ought to get praise all the time.

Lisa:

Me too.

(Students, grade 2)

The students in this excerpt wanted more praise. They argued that good behaviour ought to result in praise, whereas their teacher seldom gave them more than a noncommittal “good” as confirmation. According to Ella, getting “unpraise” as feedback signalled that the teacher was dissatisfied with her performance. We interpreted the excerpt as students longing for the positive emotions and motivation that praise can evoke, as well as making them more confident about what they knew.

In addition to teacher praise as a crucial source of information to develop their knowing about what they know, several students stressed their ability to immediately know the answer to a question as a sign of knowing, “When Stina [teacher], for example, asks us [a question] and you can answer directly” (Helen, grade 3). Other signs of knowing that students reported were remembering, being quite familiar with a task, and experiencing something as “easy” or “working”. However, as with knowing the quality of one’s performance, teacher feedback was the only way to be absolutely sure. A lack of confirmation from the teacher regarding the correctness of a performance or an answer was often interpreted by the students as a sign of the need for further practice.

3.2. You must do things to learn

Even though the students gave only vague descriptions of what they were supposed to learn, their descriptions of the consequential behaviour, what they must do in order to learn, were more specific. In an interview with Ella, Lisa, Erik, and Peter in grade 2, a classroom situation was discussed in which the teacher Linn had told Peter that he had chosen a book that was too easy and did not match his reading skills. The following reflections were made:

Peter:

You can’t, you know, pretend to read.

Interviewer:

Not pretend to read?

Lisa:

You have to read, have to … Even though your eyes hurt.

(Students grade 2)

Several students said that they were expected to put some effort into what they were doing in order to progress in their learning, as in reading for real from a suitable book, as mentioned above. What the students interpreted from teacher feedback as what they had to do in order to learn and improve included practising, doing a lot of work, and doing things with quality. It also required making the best of the help you got and helping create good conditions for learning.

3.2.1. Practising

The students explained that they had to practise in order to learn, and mentioned gaining knowledge as an anticipated consequence of practising. Nevertheless, the outcome of acquiring the required knowledge was not certain, but something they might accomplish after practising.

Maria:

Like if you don’t [know the answer], you write it, if you don’t know it.

Cecilia:

At first, at first you’re practising the questions you don’t know the answers to, and then, then you practise.

Andreas:

Then you practise.

Cecilia:

And then perhaps you know.

(Students grade 3)

According to the students in the excerpt, they had to identify knowledge gaps and had to have strategies for practising in order to fill those gaps. For example, Maria noted which maths tasks she did not know the answer to when questioned by the teacher and used that feedback to know what to practise.

Sara in grade 3 described a classroom situation in which she interpreted that her maths skills did not correspond with the teacher’s feedback and that further practice was recommended. Sara considered herself to be involved in making decisions on what she must practise, although “It’s mostly her [the teacher] who decides”. This could be compared with how the students accounted for the teacher’s role in knowing what one knows and how they must adapt to the teacher’s feed up. This feedback was interpreted as the need for practice in order to enhance, or avoid loss of, knowledge:

Sara:

Yes, but you can practise it some more, because …

Karin:

Because you can get better [at something].

Sara:

Yes, and because you can forget.

(Students grade 3)

Thus, when teachers told students that they had to practise more, besides interpreting this feedback as not having acquired the necessary knowledge, the students might also interpret it as a must in order to get even better and to avoid forgetting. A lot of the practising described by the students concerned repetitive training, but they also talked about reading several pages of books suitable for their individual reading skills.

In order to learn, students must practise a lot. This was interpreted as a common message in teacher feedback as understood by the students. However, the students did not perceive practice as a guarantee of learning the things expected of them. Achievement uncertainty seemed to be a part of their meaning-making of classroom work and teacher feedback.

3.2.2. Doing a lot and with quality

The students in the study interpreted feed forward from the teacher as a dictum to do things with quality, but also a dictum to do a lot of work. Doing things with quality meant performing tasks “neatly and correctly”, because, “the teacher has to be able to read it” (Frida, grade 2), and doing things properly, which made rushing through tasks unacceptable.

Several students stressed that doing things with quality called for a task-based approach in which learning had to be allowed to take time. The anticipated consequence of failing to achieve quality musts (e.g. producing sloppy writing that is difficult to read, turning letters or numbers the wrong way round, or producing hasty and thus wrong solutions to tasks) was a need to correct the mistakes, to “erase and redo”.

David:

If you’ve made a really big mistake, then you’ll have to redo everything.

Karl:

Yes, then you’ll have to erase (sighs), and erase.

David:

Or you’ll get a new work sheet.

(Students grade 2)

Erasing and redoing tasks were consequences that the students reported from their own experience as being tiresome and time consuming, and hence something they wanted to avoid. Thus, these consequences functioned as an incentive to do things with quality, which required careful, accurate, and time-consuming classroom work.

In contrast, the students also described how teachers’ feedback about expectations communicated that learning required doing a lot of work. This quantity aspect was understood as working fast and completing a lot of tasks, which was believed to result in a great deal of learning. The students talked about the number of pages they had to read, write, or complete in the maths book. They described a perceived teacher expectation that doing a lot of work was preferable to doing little work:

Per:

Like Peter, he usually finishes like …

Johan:

Half a …

Per:

… yes, yes, he finishes like half a page a day [in the maths book]. He hardly learns anything.

(Students grade 2)

The excerpt above illustrates that the students connected the quantity must with learning. In addition to a lack of learning as an anticipated consequence, failing to achieve the quantity must was stressed as resulting in postponing schoolwork. The students then had to do the work they had failed to do during the lesson at some other time, such as during a break, after school, or as homework, “Like today, the maths book was supposed to be finished/ … /or rather this chapter, or else you had to take the book home” (Maria, grade 3). Failing quantity musts could also result in detention, according to some of the students. As Karl in grade 2 put it, “If you’re supposed to do something that you don’t, or if you do something during the first lessons, and then you do nothing during the last one, then you can get a detention.”

Both doing a lot of work and doing things with quality were understood as signs of learning. The tension between the quantity and quality musts meant that the students were faced with a dilemma between (a) working fast at the expense of accuracy, and (b) working carefully at the expense of speed and quantity.

3.2.3. Making the most of the help you get

When the wait was over, the teachers’ feedback was described as taking different shapes. A common description of helpful feedback was that the teacher provided them with new questions, making them reflect once more upon a task (“The teacher doesn’t say the answer, only says things to make it a bit easier”, said Mikael in grade 3; Karl in grade 2 described how the teacher gave “small clues”). Helping without providing the solution was understood as supporting the learning process. Students valued this simplifying feedback, which left the solution of the problem for them to figure out, because they thought it helped them to learn. Simplifying as feed forward could also consist of handing out manipulatives and presenting strategies on how to use them. Some students found manipulatives, such as coins, to be helpful for learning, but not all. Other students were instead confused and unsure about what to do with them or how to understand their purpose. For instance, Tova in grade 2 stated that she had only learned how to use the material mechanically but did not see how it would help her learn mathematics.

Moreover, when several students needed help at the same time, a common teacher feedback strategy was, according the students, to try to help two or more students simultaneously:

Helen:

But sometimes I think she [the teacher] doesn’t listen to me like, like when she’s supposed to help me, and there’s someone else sitting behind, and then she puts her hand here [shows how the teacher’s hand is on the desk behind] and she stands like this [turned to the student behind] and then she talks to them instead. So, when you’re trying to say something, you find that she isn’t really listening.

Karin:

‘Now you’ll do it like this’ [imitating the teacher facing one student], and then ‘three hundred’ [facing another student], ‘this is what you should do’ [back to the first student], ‘three hundred’ [back to the second student], and then … she keeps on like that.

Helen:

Yes.

Sara:

And it isn’t easy.

Karin:

You can’t really keep up.

(Students grade 3)

When a teacher tried to give helpful feedback to more than one student at the same time, the students often perceived a lack of attention from the teacher, which evoked frustration. They felt that the teacher was not paying attention due to a divided focus when trying to manage two or more students simultaneously. The feedback, in the form of fragmented instructing, was described as short, mainly directive, given in small fragments between which the teacher helped other students (and incomplete if the teacher did not return), and rather commonly not followed up.

While many students appreciated teachers’ simplifying feedback because it helped them to better understand the lesson and pushed them to learn things, fragmented instructing feedback was considered rather unhelpful. Although the students found fragmented instructing difficult to use, they reported that they still had to make the most of this incomplete help. Several of them understood that their teacher was forced to use this feedback strategy due to the classroom situation. Helen in grade 3, for instance, argued that the teacher’s fragmented instructing and rapid switching between students were the result of trying to help as many students as possible in a limited time, and declared an understanding of the teacher’s conduct as being prompted by constraining or situational conditions.

3.2.4. Helping create good conditions for learning

In the analysis, we found behavioural musts to be a salient part of teachers’ feedback according to how the students talked about it. When the students addressed behavioural musts, they firstly and consistently reported what they saw as being expected of them in order to obtain good learning conditions in the classroom. “It has to be quiet, you need calm to study. We must show respect for one another” (Sara, grade 3). The students perceived that teachers more or less frequently told them that they all needed to contribute to creating and maintaining silence and order in the classroom, thereby providing their classmates with good conditions to concentrate on their work. This was understood as most important, as necessary for learning, and as a way of showing respect for one another.

According to most students, being quiet and raising one’s hand while waiting for the teacher’s permission to talk or to ask for help was something every student must do in order to create and maintain a calm atmosphere, enabling everyone to work and study undisturbed. When asked if one could get help from peers, Peter in grade 2 responded, “But then, then you’ll have to be really quiet, or else Linn [the teacher] will tell you off.” Silence, or at least a low noise level in the classroom, was reported as necessary for learning. The students described how the teacher hushed them and told them to lower their voices or be quiet if she did not find it to be quiet enough. The students gave common descriptions of what they defined as necessary to help create good learning conditions. In addition to being quiet and raising one’s hand, this involved sitting still and quietly at your desk, preferably but not necessarily concentrating on the given task, and raising your hand if you needed help, and by doing so not disturbing others.

How the students knew whether or not the learning conditions were good in the classroom varied. However, teacher feedback that corrected ongoing violations against behavioural musts informed them of a lack of calm or order in the classroom independently of whether they initially perceived disruptive or distracting behaviour. The teacher might tell the whole class, or single students, to be quiet, to stay in their seats, etc.

Prevalent behavioural musts that the students displayed as having learned from such teacher feedback in order to maintain good conditions for learning were: (a) you must sit still at your desk, (b) you must not talk out loud, and (c) you must obey the teacher’s instructional correction. According to the students’ reports, teachers’ most common feedback in response to off-task behaviour was telling students to return to their desks, sit down, be quiet, not disturb others, and concentrate on their work. This was described as taking place frequently. “Like Markus, he, today, Linn told him three times, because he was running to someone called Karl” (Anna, grade 2). If students did not comply with this correcting feedback, they risked punishment as a feedback. “Then you’ll have to stay after school on a Wednesday, or sit in the classroom when the others have left, or you must [stay in the classroom] when there’s a break” (Erik, grade 2). Working in the classroom during breaks was a consequence the students reported for failing both academic and behavioural musts. It was considered a punishment feedback by most of the students, and also seen as fair if a student had spent lessons disturbing others and not doing schoolwork. In addition, the students talked about what they considered to be more severe consequences, such as detention or being sent to the head teacher. Their understanding of these more severe consequences seemed to be rather vague. The students described them as possible but not very likely threats of punishment, drawing upon memories of other students’ doings rather than on feedback from the teacher, and they emphasised that these consequences rarely, if ever, happened.

4. Discussion

The aim of this study was to explore and conceptualise how primary-school students construct meaning from teacher feedback. Due to differences in age and time spent at school, it is reasonable to assume that younger students have different conceptions and experiences of school than older ones, as reported in previous research (e.g., Gamlem and Smith 2013), and thus they might construct different meanings from teachers’ feedback. Consequently, there is a need for studies that contribute to a field in which we have sparse knowledge. This is, as far as we know, one of very few studies in which primary-school students’ meaning-makings of teacher feedback in everyday classroom life has been examined. Thus, the major contributions of the current study have been to give voice to primary-school students’ perceptions and experiences of their teachers’ feedback, and to provide a framework of concepts, grounded in their narratives and reports. Teachers and educational researchers can adopt this framework in order to further survey and understand primary-school students’ perspectives and meaning-making of teacher feedback.

The most prevalent finding in the current study is that the students interpreted their teachers’ feedback as containing a lot of musts connected to learning and that they defined their situation as students (cf. Thomas and Thomas 1928) as being about learning as a must. The meaning that the primary-school students constructed from their teachers’ feedback primarily concerned the must of doing certain things that were understood as signs of learning, rather than the topics to be learned. Compared with Burnett and Mandel (2010), who found that younger primary-school students preferred praise for effort rather than for ability, the effort in the form of things that they as students must do in order to learn seems to be clearer to them than the learning goals, according to the present findings. Acknowledging being a student in early primary school as one of children’s life phases (Närvänen and Näsman 2004), this result indicates a need for awareness amongst primary-school teachers regarding what primary-school students recognise as the content of feedback.

There was, however, ambiguity in the students’ descriptions of signs of learning. From their teachers’ feedback, they understood that they were expected to do a lot of work and at the same time to do things with quality. These contrasting musts were often required simultaneously, creating a dilemma or conflict for students between two different rationales. Inconsistent or conflicting communication from teachers tends to create confusion and criticism among students (e.g., Thornberg 2007). At the same time as the students voiced criticism of the fragmented feedback they were sometimes given by their teachers, stressing that such feedback that was difficult to use, the students also expressed an understanding as they tried to explain their teachers’ actions or choices by referring to good intentions.

Even though teachers and students did not always share the same opinion, the teacher’s view was perceived as the most valid. This trust in the teacher and reliance on the teacher’s opinion being correct is in line with both Torrance and Pryor (1998) and Harris, Brown, and Harnett (2014) studies. In the latter, students considered their teachers to possess relative subject expertise. Even though the students in our study relied on their teacher to make the correct assessment (including when the self-assessment of a performance differed from the teacher’s view), they described teacher feedback in terms of being more or less helpful (cf. Gamlem and Smith 2013; Hargreaves 2013; Peterson and Earl Irving 2008). As in Hargreaves (2013) and Murtagh’s (2014) studies, the students in the current study held a joint view of what characterised helpful feedback; namely, giving clues and making tasks easier without giving the answers – a description very much in line with Hargreaves (2013). Another finding that was similar to Hargreaves’ was that the students in our study stressed that they needed to make an effort in order to learn. In our study, this finding was, however, even more significant because the students talked about this in terms of musts – as things they must do in order to learn – and in their view there were a lot of musts.

The students described sitting still, being quiet, raising one’s hand, and not disturbing others as things they must do in order to help create good conditions for learning. From an outside perspective, the same things could be described, drawing on Jackson (1968), as the unwritten things they have to learn as part of becoming students and thus as part of the hidden curriculum that results in social control (Vallance 1983). This is in line with Boistrup (2017), who argues that assessment discourses in classrooms, together with regulatory decisions and administrative measures, form an apparatus in the system of the school with the function of perpetuating social orders. However, the students in our study did not express sitting still or being quiet as things they had to learn, but as things they were told they must do, and as things that helped them to learn and to create better learning conditions in the classroom. Our findings support previous research showing that children tend to value rules aimed at structuring and maintaining schoolwork in the classroom as important because they tend to see these rules as functional and helpful rather than arbitrary and pointless (e.g., Thornberg 2008).

The students’ construction of teacher feedback as containing a lot of musts, but without sufficiently explaining what they must learn, tells us something about how primary-school students understand school and what it means to be a student. Furthermore, it displays a complex picture of being a primary-school student, involving tensions between musts to learn, clarity in terms of what to do in order to learn, and vagueness about what they are actually supposed to learn.

4.1. Limitations and implications

Considering the small and non-probability sample and the qualitative-interpretative constructivist grounded theory design of the study, we make no claims to describe how primary-school students in general construct meaning from teacher feedback. Rigour throughout the study, involving sufficient data, systematic comparisons and strong links between data and analysis served as the criteria for credibility in coding (Charmaz 2014). Reliability in coding could have been enhanced, however, by an independent coder. Because the findings are contextual, provisional, and fallible (Thornberg 2012), and thus an interpretative portrayal rather than an exact picture of the phenomenon studied (Charmaz 2014), they should not be considered as universal truths, but as a working model that has to take into account the local conditions and should be seen as a modest speculation on the possible applicability of findings to other situations (Patton 2015). Larsson (2009) mentions a generalisation through recognition of patterns in which the readers, not the researchers, judge the generalisability. In that way, our findings can contribute to an understanding of how students, and especially students at primary schools, interpret and make meanings from teacher feedback. Because there is a lack of research on students’ perspectives on teacher feedback, especially studies that give primary-school students a voice, studies such as this one are vital. As we have already stressed, it is very likely that how primary-school students understand teachers’ feedback differs from how students at upper-secondary school or university understand it due to their different frames of references (Charon 2009; Mayall 2002). Failing to acknowledge this would be to underestimate the contribution of primary-school students and their perspectives to enhancing our understanding of classroom feedback (cf. Närvänen and Näsman. 2004).

We argue that using constructivist grounded theory, gathering and analysing data with an open mind (Dey 1999), and not interpreting or valuing the feedback based on its formative function has helped us to construct a grounded theory that is fully based on primary-school students’ conceptions, and thus recognises children and their thoughts (Lee 2001). The findings have implications for teachers in their feedback practices. Firstly, teachers need to examine and reflect upon how children make meaning from their various forms of feedback, and they need to base their feedback on children’s understanding of, and conceptions drawn from, their experiences of feedback. Drawing on the link between how students perceive feedback affect their motivation (Hargreaves 2013), and acknowledging the differences in how students in different life phases interpret their surroundings differently (Närvänen and Näsman. 2004), the current findings contribute to a deeper understanding of primary-school students’ perspectives on teacher feedback. Teachers also need to be aware of the potential problems their feedback might create for students – such as perceived unfairness, teacher dependency, and dilemmas – and the possible hidden curricula these might produce (cf. Hargreaves 2013). Such awareness might enhance teachers’ feedback practices by making it easier for them to address problems and to change their strategies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabeth Eriksson

Elisabeth Eriksson is a PhD student in education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. Her thesis presents a qualitative study based on observations and interviews using grounded theory methods, with focus on feedback in primary school classrooms. The present paper is included in the thesis. Her research interests mainly concern pedagogical assessment and feedback, but also induction with focus on newly qualified teachers.

Lisa Björklund Boistrup

Lisa Björklund Boistrup, Ph.D., is Professor in Mathematics Education at Malmö University. One of her research areas is mathematics in relation to other contexts, such as workplaces, with a particular interest in interfaces between different teaching contents in vocational education. Another area of research is implicit and explicit assessment, both in relation to national tests, and in relation to feedback in classroom communication.

Robert Thornberg

Robert Thornberg, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. His current research is on school bullying, especially with a focus on social and moral processes involved in bullying, bystander rationales, reactions and actions, and students’ perspectives, experiences and explanations. His second line of research is on values, norms, social interactions and social relations in everyday school life. A third line of research is on teacher education, especially student teachers’ motives to become a teacher and their experiences of distressed situations during teacher training.