What predicts undergraduates’ student feedback literacy? Impacts of epistemic beliefs and mediation of critical thinking

ABSTRACT

Student feedback literacy is emphasised in recent literature as a critical attribute of university graduates. Although the impacts of epistemic beliefs on specific dimensions of student feedback literacy have been discussed in the literature, there is still a lack of quantitative research to investigate the strength of such impacts. This study explores the impact of epistemic beliefs on student feedback literacy among 727 Cambodian undergraduate students, using structural equation modelling. Results reveal that the complexity dimension of epistemic beliefs positively influences student feedback literacy, both directly and indirectly through critical thinking. Meanwhile, the source dimension directly influences student feedback literacy positively, but indirectly negatively through critical thinking. The justification dimension indirectly benefits student feedback literacy through critical thinking, while the certainty dimension has a direct negative effect. The study concludes that nurturing dialectic epistemic beliefs and critical thinking is vital for developing feedback-literate students in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Student feedback literacy
• Cambodian undergraduate students
• epistemic beliefs
• critical thinking

Ethical disclosure statement

This study has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at Author 1’s university. A reference number is 2021-2022-0328. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Education University of Hong Kong: [Grant Number RG76/2020-2021R].