Promoting student engagement with teacher feedback through rebuttal writing

Abstract

Teacher feedback is of little use without student engagement. Few studies have, however, empirically considered how direct interventions may enhance student engagement with feedback. This study explored whether and to what extent the use of a rebuttal-writing task can serve as a learning tool to promote student engagement with teacher feedback. Data were collected from 118 undergraduates through multiple sources, including a structured questionnaire, students’ first drafts and revised essays, and a retrospective interview. The results showed that although the students did not really enjoy devoting more time and effort to writing rebuttals while making revisions, they seemed to welcome the rebuttal task, especially when they became more familiar with it, or when they began to see the value of having the task. We discuss these results, suggesting how writing rebuttals promotes student engagement, and argue that students have a key role to play in making teacher feedback work.