Impact of Feedback on Students Behaviour - Case Study Example

One group of students verbalized aloud while solving problems during all sessions, the second group verbalized aloud during the first half of the training program (first three sessions) but not during the second half, and the third group did not verbalize. It was expected that overt verbalization during the first half of training would help students learn how to work subtraction problems in a strategic (algorithmic) fashion. To the extent that students could then shift this means of regulating their task performance to a covert level, we felt that continued verbalization would offer no benefits.

Researchers have shown that once strategic task behaviors are instilled, overt verbalization may be discontinued with no performance decrement (Harris, 2002).The second purpose of this study is to investigate how the sequence of effort-attributional feedback affected students' self-efficacy and skills. Attributional theories postulate that individuals form causal attributions (i.e., perceived causes) for the outcomes of their actions (Kelley & Michela, 2000). In achievement contexts, students often attribute their successes and failures to ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck (Weiner, 1999).

An effort is presumably under volitional control and amenable to change. Researchers have shown that linking past failures with insufficient effort promotes effort attributions and persistence (Andrews & Debus, 1998; Dweck, 1995) and that effort feedback for prior successes enhances children's motivation, self-efficacy, and skills (Schunk, 2005).In the present study, students periodically received attributional feedback linking their successful problem solving with effort during the first half of the training program, received effort feedback during the second half of training, or did not receive effort feedback.

It was expected that effort-attributional feedback would promote student's self-efficacy and skills.