Feedback-Memory: An approach to promoting the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive teacher feedback

Abstract

AbstractIn line with social referencing theory, recent studies have revealed that teacher feedback might be an important factor influencing how students are socially accepted by their peers. This study investigates the effects of an intervention aiming to enhance the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive teacher feedback – the Feedback-Memory approach. Feedback-Memory was designed as a multi-component intervention with 4 elements: 1) Identifying students rarely receiving positive teacher feedback (target students), 2) giving positive teacher feedback to students (especially to the target students) at the end of every lesson, 3) asking classmates to remember positive teacher feedback at the end of the school day, and 4) rewarding students for remembering the teacher feedback content. Two main research questions are investigated within our study: 1) Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the frequency of classmates-perceived positive teacher feedback towards students rarely receiving positive teacher feedback? 2) Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive teacher feedback? Twenty-five classes (fourth grade) and 531 students participated in this study in German elementary schools. Classes were randomly assigned to 10 intervention classes and 15 control classes. In every intervention and control class, the 5 students least likely to be receiving positive teacher feedback were identified. Results of multilevel analysis reveal that the Feedback-Memory intervention significantly enhanced the classmates-perceived positive teacher feedback and the social acceptance of the target students compared to students in the control group and their classmates.