Unpacking the Complexities of Emotional Responses to External Feedback, Internal Feedback Orientation and Emotion Regulation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Exploration
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Feedback Orientation and the Feebdack Ecological Model
2.1.1. The Definition of Feedback Orientation
2.1.2. The Feedback Ecological Model (FEM)
2.2. Feedback and Emotion
2.3. Feedback in Teacher Education
2.4. The Present Study
- What emotions do pre-service teachers’ experience when receiving critical or negative feedback in teacher education?
- How do pre-service teachers’ four aspects of feedback orientation influence their emotion regulation in feedback contexts in teacher education?
3. Method
3.1. Research Context and Participants
3.2. Data Collection and Preparation
3.3. Data Analysis
4. Results
4.1. Students’ Initial Reactions to Critical/Negative Feedback
4.2. The Role of Students’ FO in Emotion Regulation
4.3. The Indirect Role of FO in Emotion Regulation via Students’ Appreciation of the Meaning and Value of Feedback
4.4. Other Strategies to Regulate Negative Emotions
4.4.1. Seeking Further Feedback
4.4.2. Peer Support
5. Discussion
5.1. Receiving Critical/Negative Feedback and Dealing with Emotions
5.2. FO’s Important Roles in Emotion Regulation
5.3. Feedback Seeking from Teachers to Form Dialogical Feedback
5.4. Implications and Future Directions
5.4.1. To Emotion Regulation Research in the Feedback Context
5.4.2. To Explore the Construct of Feedback-Specific Emotions
5.4.3. To Advance Feedback Research in Teacher Education
5.4.4. To Further Test and Modify the Conceptual Framework of Feedback Orientation
5.5. Limitations
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Key Themes | Brief Description |
---|---|
Receiving feedback | We introduced how students initially perceived, experienced and reacted to feedback received from teachers. |
Reactions to negative feedback | We explained how students regulated emotions and responded emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally to negative feedback |
Role of feedback orientation (FO) in emotion regulation | We articulated the role of students’ multiple aspects of FO (e.g., utility, self-efficacy, responsibility) in helping them managing feedback-induced emotions through interpretation, meaning-making and behavioral responses |
Additional emotion regulation strategies | We reported other cognitive and behavioral strategies students utilized to regulate negative emotions induced by teacher feedback. |
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Student | Age | Gender | School Year |
---|---|---|---|
Lillian | 22 | Female | Year 5 |
Gwen | 21 | Female | Year 5 |
Queena | 22 | Female | Year 5 |
Linda | 22 | Female | Year 4 |
Zoe | 22 | Female | Year 4 |
Hedy | 23 | Female | Year 4 |
Yetta | 21 | Female | Year 4 |
Hannah | 21 | Female | Year 3 |
Hulda | 21 | Female | Year 3 |
Louis | 21 | Male | Year 2 |
Tiffany | 20 | Female | Year 2 |
FBUT | FBSE | FBSO | FBAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Lillian | “The teacher gave the feedback not to criticizing, and he hoped my performance can be better”. | “I believe students are responsible for responding to the feedback” | ||
Gwen | “If it (feedback) improves my work, why don’t I accept it?” | “My self-efficacy helps me not to feel so bad”. | ||
Queena | “I think the teacher’s feedback is valuable… so I would not think it is denying me”. | |||
Linda | “Valuable feedback must be helpful to my grades” | “I can still make revisions during the process and improve”. | “I would focus on how I should revise” | |
Zoe | “Comments that could help me do better” | “I could sense my teacher was intended for me to become better” | ||
Hedy | “Feedback is helpful to my study” | “I feel I can use it, and it improves my performance if I use it” | ||
Yetta | “It (useful feedback) helped me to avoid the worse grade”. | “The teacher didn’t give me negative feedback intentionally just to make me feel bad”. | “I feel responsible for responding to it, because achieving the grade is my own thing”. | |
Hannah | “The comments are valuable for me to reconsider and comprehend the learning content deeper”. | “I should respect my teacher’s time and effort to respond to the feedback”. | ||
Hulda | “The teacher’s feedback must be reasonable” | “I can improve the relationship with my teacher” | ||
Louis | “Feedback must be valuable to me” | “I know that I can respond to it” | “I always believe that the nature of feedback is communication, so no matter what feedback I received, my teacher gave with the good intention”. | “If I ignored it, the feedback is meaningless” |
Tiffany | “Feedback improves my performance and it is valuable” | “The confidence to respond to the feedback helped me to feel satisfied a little”. | “I know I can improve the relationship between my teacher and me”. | “I think my responsibility mobilized me to respond to the feedback” |
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Yang, L.; Wu, Y.; Liang, Y.; Yang, M. Unpacking the Complexities of Emotional Responses to External Feedback, Internal Feedback Orientation and Emotion Regulation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Exploration. Systems 2023, 11, 315. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11060315
Yang L, Wu Y, Liang Y, Yang M. Unpacking the Complexities of Emotional Responses to External Feedback, Internal Feedback Orientation and Emotion Regulation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Exploration. Systems. 2023; 11(6):315. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11060315
Chicago/Turabian StyleYang, Lan, Yiqi Wu, Yuan Liang, and Min Yang. 2023. "Unpacking the Complexities of Emotional Responses to External Feedback, Internal Feedback Orientation and Emotion Regulation in Higher Education: A Qualitative Exploration" Systems 11, no. 6: 315. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11060315