Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


29279.pdf (4 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

The Role of Feedback in Teacher/Student Relationships

Blewett, Kelly
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6702-3651
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1522319541339018

Abstract Details

2018, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature.
The Role of Feedback in Student/Teacher Relationships is a qualitative study of student intake of teacher feedback in first-year writing. While research on feedback has typically elevated the written comment on an object of study without considering how contextual conditions shape its meaning, more recent work foregrounds instead the feedback cycle, the back-and-forth negotiations of texts between students and teachers in a class. My dissertation builds on this work by examining how relational perception informs students’ interpretation of feedback as well as their affective responses to it. Considering relational dynamics in first-year writing is significant given what is known about student retention in postsecondary schools: the first-year is a pivotal period when students adjust, or fail to adjust, to the academic and social expectations of the college environment. Using data culled from transcripts of forty hour-long interviews and textual analysis of student writing, I contend that an instructor’s rapport with and immediacy in responding to a class impacts students’ intake of feedback, particularly with regard to nondirective comments, in measurable ways that have been underexplored to date. Two expert teachers and four focal students from each of their classes participated in the study. Focal students were chosen to embody a range of subject positions—age, gender, race, intended career path—and also a range of levels of motivation toward writing. Motivation was measured using a Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, or MSLQ, which has been used and validated in a variety of contexts. While this data set could have supported a case-study analysis of any one of the students or teachers, I analyze the data set for patterns across participants regarding affect circulation, relational impression, and feedback interpretation as these commonalities are more useful than portraits of individual students would be. Patterns revealed that students articulated and responded to similar affective economies in each classroom, and that these economies, while distinct, had similar effects: they provided students with the motivation to write, inspired trust in the teacher, and, when necessary, offered the resilience necessary to persist. Drawing on two bodies of literature—relational teaching and responding to student writing—this qualitative study contributes toward a theory of relational teaching in the writing classroom that can be taken up by other researchers of feedback in writing studies. Additionally, understanding how affective economies are interpreted by students and the role these economies play in the feedback cycle will assist teachers in meaningfully communicating with students about their work.
Laura Micciche, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Christopher Carter, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Russel Durst, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
223 p.
Rhetoric
first-year composition; pedagogy; feedback; affect; relational

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Blewett, K. (2018). The Role of Feedback in Teacher/Student Relationships [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1522319541339018

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Blewett, Kelly. The Role of Feedback in Teacher/Student Relationships. 2018. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1522319541339018.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Blewett, Kelly. "The Role of Feedback in Teacher/Student Relationships." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1522319541339018

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1522319541339018
1,000
© 2018, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License The Role of Feedback in Teacher/Student Relationships by Kelly Blewett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.