4. Chapter Four: Study two An in-depth interview study with
4.3 Discussion 178
Taking a phenomenographical approach to the data analysis allowed me to represent the students’ experiences of the phenomenon in a holistic manner. That is I was able to firstly view the individual student’s experiences via their drawing and subsequent interview. Secondly, I was then able to view the experience of the students as a collective as I merged their utterances and constructed themes, sub themes and extended quotes which really captured the nuances of such experiences. What was apparent to me from the data and subsequent discussion in this chapter is the qualitatively different ways that the students interviewed have experienced and reacted to the feedback they received. At times a dichotomy was present in relation to how students reacted emotionally, motivationally and behaviourally to the feedback they received. I think perhaps some of the most
important findings relate to the concept that students were entering into assessment situations with pre-determined grade outcome expectations in their mind which seemed to be either derived from a desire to achieve a 2:1 degree classification or determined by the students’ ability conceptions i.e. what they felt they were capable of. This seems particularly important as such findings replicate those from study one within this thesis. It was clear that in many situations this pre- determined grade outcome expectation mitigated their subsequent reaction and utilisation of the feedback received. In many instances I was also struck by the apparent differences in the ways some students were able to positively react to situations which were adverse; that is when the student received a grade which was lower than their pre-determined expected level. Some students suffered what appeared to me to be catastrophic drops in confidence, efficacy and motivation in the face of adversity whereas others were able to utilise the disappointment as a motivator for future assessment situations. The literature has attested to such notions as students focusing upon the grade and not the improvement related feedback which causes lecturers much frustration (MacDonald 1991; Mutch 2003; Orsmond, Merry, & Reiling 2005; Carless 2006; Weaver 2006). However, the literature has yet to explain this in relation to how students manage their emotional reactions and the associated motivational changes. It is apparent from my findings that this is possible and chapter five of this thesis will seek to make these connections in order to further the knowledge base within the field.
Emotions were a very important consideration for students within this study. In particular the data in study two indicates that some students are able to self- regulate their emotional reactions and conclude that achievement is beyond their predetermined level but that they can use the feedback in order to maintain or improve this level next time. In this regard Fredrickson & Cohn’s (2008) suggestion that positive emotion enhances the student’s propensity to self-regulate seems to be operating here. For example, being able to self-regulate your emotional reaction seems to corroborate with cognitions related to using feedback in order to further improve in the next assessment. Conversely, the findings in this study also suggest
that for some students, who are not able to self-regulate their emotional reactions as described by Dirkx (2001) and Boud & Falchikov (2007), they are unable to cognitively process the feedback received and by inference are unable to utilise it in the next assessment. The findings within this study therefore seem to suggest that the ‘better performing’ students are often the ones capable of self-regulating and therefore able to make the best use of the feedback available to them which does support previous literature in this area (Covic & Jones, 2008; Fisher et al., 2011; Scott et al., 2011).
Many of the students that I interviewed articulated concerns relating to their ability. Such concerns seem to act as pre-dispositions that students carried with them into assessment episodes. Further these pre-dispositions were informed to some degree by previous experiences. Some students held a belief that their ability level was fixed and therefore regardless of the feedback received this level would not change. The minority of students articulated viewpoints which support the suggestions of Dweck (1986) who argued that individuals holding a belief that ability is changeable, tend to view their ability level as being measured by what they knew and understood and therefore this was within their control to alter. In this case the findings within study two seem to suggest that the population group I interviewed overwhelmingly held a conception that ability is fixed. This therefore does suggest that feedback processing utilisation could be inhibited in individuals holding such a belief (Dweck, 1986; Dweck & Leggett, 1988).
Many of the students within this study discussed how much they liked 1-2-1 meetings with their lecturers, which is congruent with findings within the established literature (Hedgcock and Lefkowitz, 1994, 1996; Hyland, 2000; Drew, 2001; Thomas, 2002; Pitts, 2005; Crozier et al. 2008; Rea & Cochrane, 2008; Duers and Brown, 2009; Pokorny and Pickford, 2010; Reid, 2010; Blair & McGinty 2012). Reasons for this ranged from discussing their work, receiving the grade or clarifying feedback comments which they did not understand. Such viewpoints seem to concur with Brockbank & McGill (1998) who reported that students like to have the opportunity to engage personally with the marker to discuss the feedback rather
than just receive written comments. However that is not to say that all students liked this. It was apparent that certain students who were low in confidence tended to avoid, if they could, interaction with their lecturer. This suggests that for these students, the operational method of speaking to students about their work in a more ‘dialogic’ manner, via a 1-2-1 meeting would not foster comprehension and subsequent utilisation of feedback.
The phenomenographical analysis thus far has to some degree concentrated upon examples derived from students’ personal experiences. The data produced in this study was vast and as such the categorisation of utterances into themes I feel only goes so far in explaining the phenomenon. With this in mind I was very keen to display the data in a more phenomenographically traditional manner via an outcome space. I was therefore inclined to attempt to both visually and verbally represent the variation of experiences that the interviewed students had articulated. In chapter five I will discuss the secondary analysis process whereby I firstly conceptualise what was occurring within this participant group and secondly present the outcome space as five categories which depict the student’s experiences.