Engaging Students in the Margins: A Mixed-Methods Case Study Exploring Student and Instructor Response to Feedback in the First-Year Writing Classroom.

Providing feedback is one of the most time-consuming aspects of writing instruction. However, its effects are not well understood. Though divergences between instructors’ goals and commenting practices and variations in students’ responses are well documented, instructor and student perspectives are underrepresented in the existing literature, leaving it unclear why such divergences and variations occur. Furthermore, the terms used to describe feedback are generally left undefined and untheorized. This dissertation introduces a definition of feedback for the writing classroom and theorizes the role that feedback plays in this context. Using findings from a series of interviews and a corpus analysis of instructors’ written comments and students’ revision plans and revisions, this study explores how nine students with low levels of self-efficacy and motivation and two instructors of required first-year writing described their experiences with feedback and considers how they responded to the feedback they received. This mixed-methods study theorizes feedback as a continuous cycle of communication, interpretation, and negotiation through which instructors and students develop understandings of one another’s feedback. Students’ responses function as feedback because they directly inform the subsequent decisions instructors make when commenting on their writing. This study also foregrounds the role that instructors’ and students’ goals and beliefs play in the feedback cycle. These goals and beliefs offer one explanation for the divergences and variations noted. For instance, tensions became apparent in the goals and beliefs that the instructors articulated, making it difficult for them to realize some goals in their written comments, even when they aligned with those frequently recommended by composition scholars. Additionally, students’ responses more closely corresponded with their goals and beliefs than with their instructor’s goals or commenting practices, suggesting that instead of supporting students’ purposes for writing, as scholars recommend, instructors should help students set writing-focused goals. Together, these findings demonstrate a need to reconsider the best practices for commenting on student writing, both in terms of what instructors can accomplish in written comments and what can best support students’ development as writers.PhDEnglish and EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116690/1/janeider_1.pd