Students' Interpretation of Formative Assessment Feedback: Three Claims for Why We Know So Little about Something So Important
Abstract
Abstract If K‐12 students are to be fully integrated as active participants in their own learning, understanding how they interpret formative assessment feedback is needed. The objective of this article is to advance three claims about why teachers and assessment scholars/specialists may have little understanding of students’ interpretation of formative assessment feedback. The three claims are as follows. First, there is little systematic research of K‐12 students’ interpretations of feedback. Systematic research requires gathering substantive evidence of students’ cognitive and emotional processes using psychological methods and tools. Second, there is an overemphasis on the external assessment process at the expense of uncovering learners’ internal reasoning and emotional processes. This overemphasis may be due to vestiges of behavioral approaches and lack of training in social cognitive methods. Third, there are psychological tools such as the clinical interview, pioneered by Piaget and used by psychologists to “enter the child's mind,” which may be helpful in uncovering students’ interpretation of feedback and associated behavioral responses. If the purpose of formative assessment is to change student learning, and feedback is delivered as a conduit to help with this long‐term change, understanding students’ interpretation of feedback plays a central role in the validity of the process.
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Students' cognitive and affective responses to feedback play an essential role in their engagement with it and the efficacy of the feedback in influencing student learning or performance.
“Students' cognitive and affective responses to feedback play an essential role in their engagement with it and the efficacy of the feedback in influencing student learning or performance (Leighton, 2019).”
From The Next Black Box of Formative Assessment: A Model of the Internal Mechanisms of Feedback Processing (2022) · cites this paper as Leighton, 2019
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- Authors
- Leighton, J. P.
- Affiliations
- University of Alberta (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Leighton, Jacqueline P.
- Venue
- Journal of Educational Measurement
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-08-23
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 793-814
- ISSN
- 0022-0655 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-3984
- OpenAlex
- W2969964033
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 16.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Educational Measurement (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC Grant No. 435‐2016‐0114)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Student Assessment and Feedback
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational and Psychological Assessments
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Research and Methods
- Keywords
- formative assessment, feedback interpretation, K-12 students, clinical interview, Piaget
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