Nonengagement and unsuccessful engagement with feedback in lower secondary education: The role of student characteristics

Feedback can be a powerful learning intervention and learners’ active engagement is assumed to be one of the most important determinants of feedback effectiveness. But not all students successfully engage with feedback. In the present study, we aimed to make students’ engagement with feedback visible by focusing on their text revisions as an indicator of feedback response. On the basis of theoretical models of feedback processing, we differentiated between behavioral nonengagement (i.e., not revising at all after receiving feedback) and unsuccessful engagement (i.e., revising after receiving feedback, but not improving in the process). Capitalizing on this distinction, we compared the characteristics of students in both groups with those of students who (successfully) engaged with the feedback. We provided automated computer-based feedback on a writing task to a sample of 937 students in lower secondary education in Germany (49% female, Grades 7[28%], 8 [29%], and 9[43%]), asking students to revise their texts according to the feedback. We found that 20% of the students did not make any revisions to their text after receiving feedback (nonengagement) and that 47% of the students did not improve their performance after working with the feedback during a text revision (unsuccessful engagement). Male students and students with lower cognitive abilities were more likely to show nonengagement. For unsuccessful engagement, cognitive abilities and the English grade were relevant predictors, hinting at the role that domain-specific competencies play in translating feedback into effective revision. We also found significant positive associations of intrinsic task value with successful feedback engagement. We discuss how future research could advance understanding of feedback processing by taking a more fine-grained approach to investigating feedback response.