Mediated performance in the feedback process: reinforcing improvement

ABSTRACT

Feedback on writing, we argue, consists of a series of micro-events which encourage students to make sense of task requirements, negotiate assessment decisions, and reorganize their performance. While students’ interpretations of ‘effective feedback’ have been widely discussed and problematized, less attention has been devoted to how they improve their sense-making and navigate different feedback experiences. Drawing on interview and textual data from two Chinese students studying their master’s degrees at a British university, this study explores how the students used coursework feedback to improve their writing. We show how they worked to create internal knowledge structures with the assistance of external resources. We see this as the students’ mediated performance resulting from their engagement with feedback and reinforcing self-coordination at intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. We believe our analysis contributes to a better understanding of the influence of feedback by highlighting how it shapes, and is shaped by, ongoing interpretations of disciplinary, task-specific requirements.

KEYWORDS:

• Feedback
• writing improvement
• master’s students
• mediation
• agency

Acknowledgements

We would like to give our heart-felt thanks to our participants who generously shared their thoughts and data to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

This study was conducted in ethically appropriate ways. It obtained the approval of the Graduate School of Education research ethics committee. All participants signed consent forms before each interview and during the collection of written materials.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article. They are not publicly available due to the confidentiality of these data (i.e. student writing, assessment materials).

Statements

The work reported has not been previously published, and the piece – in present or revised form – is not being considered for publication in other venues, and that the author(s) will not allow the manuscript to be so considered before notification in writing of an editorial decision by the journal.

Data reported in this paper were collected from human subjects and conform to the university ethics procedures (the Graduate School of Education research ethics committee) and the current BERA guidelines for ethical research. Ethics forms were used to inform the participants of their rights and obligations in this study, and the staff whose intellectual labor is used as research data were apprised of the ethical implications of participation. Full agreement was obtained from participants, including both students and their advisors. Considerable thought was given to the rights of participants and the use of data and was adhered to throughout the process of the research. In particular, consideration was given to consent to participate in research, transparency about roles and responsibilities, anonymity, confidentiality and duty of notification.