Collecting student perceptions of feedback through interviews (original) (raw)

Teachers and students make up the two major actors in classroom environment. How these two interact will largely determine the amount of learning produced. Of the many forms of teacher-student interaction, such as instruction, social interaction, and discipline, the research indicates that feedback is one of the strongest predictors of positive learning outcomes (Hattie, 2009). While research indicates that in order for feedback to be effective, it needs to be timely, appropriate to the students’ proficiency, and formative (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996), teachers’ awareness of that alone is not enough to ensure successful learning outcomes. In fact, regardless of the quality of feedback produced by one teacher, if students do not believe the feedback being delivered is beneficial to reaching their goals, its effectiveness will be greatly diminished. It is therefore necessary to overcome any form of cognitive dissonance between teacher and student about useful feedback before the learning process can begin. Determining what types of feedback students believe are important will allow teachers to address these beliefs and re-align them with what research has shown to be the most beneficial. This research aims at answering two questions: 1) What feedback do students deem relevant? 2) What forms of teacher feedback do they perceive in the classroom? After introducing the background for the research, the presentation will examine the data collected through interviews with students in their native language, the methodology used to gather such data and the results from this preliminary study. This research is based in the foreign language classroom setting of a private Japanese university. Given the limited number of classes available during one academic year, teachers and students who are in accordance in their beliefs will benefit from a powerful learning environment. Raising teacher and student awareness of classroom practices and beliefs will not only promote student motivation and learner autonomy, but also the creation of this positive learning environment.