Feedback choices and their relations to learning are age-invariant starting in middle school: A secondary data analysis

Abstract

The ability to seek feedback about one's learning is an essential skill for independent learners. Although educational researchers have focused on feedback assigned to students, little research has investigated feedback-seeking, and no previous investigation has explored feedback-seeking in relation to both learning and age. This secondary data analysis study examines the effect of age on choices to seek critical feedback and to revise digital posters as well as on learning outcomes for n = 764 students across six US public schools. Previously reported data from three middle schools were merged with new data from a middle school, a high school, and a community college to sample a larger age range. Students played a digital assessment game, Posterlet, which measured their choices to seek critical feedback and to revise posters. This study examines critical feedback-seeking across age, starting in middle school, and it demonstrates that it is possible to capture and measure learning choices (e.g., behaviors that students employ while learning) using the same assessment, Posterlet, across age. The results revealed that, starting in middle school, (1) age did not influence the frequency of critical feedback-seeking, as students' feedback choices were stable across age; (2) critical feedback-seeking correlated with learning of graphic design principles, poster performance, and students' choices to revise their posters; and, importantly, (3) age did not moderate the relation between critical feedback-seeking and learning behaviors and outcomes across a large developmental sample. Thus, critical feedback-seeking is stable from middle school through adulthood and the benefits of seeking critical feedback have the same impact on learning outcomes regardless of age.