Feedback Blackhole: When Students Ignore Teacher Feedback

Practice Does Not Make Perfect
Several years ago, I taught Michael (not his real name) in Primary Six. His mother was adamant that more composition practices would only perfect his writing, and Michael would go on to write three to four compositions almost every week in the months leading up to the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). The tone of his mother’s emails soon sounded more exasperated and resigned, though, as Michael began buckling under the pressure and the quality of his writing began fluctuating. The last straw was when his emotions boiled over and he punched out the plastic door of his toilet at home. Michael’s mother felt he needed counselling, and I decided to speak with him about this matter in school.

The Feedback Blackhole of Collective Disillusionment
Michael was contrite and apologetic when I met him. He was not apologetic for shattering the door, however, but was mortified that I wanted to speak to him regarding his actions and learning progress. When he had sufficiently calmed down, I broached the subject of his inconsistent writing quality. He confessed that he had stopped reading the comments I had written in his compositions. When I probed, he admitted that he knew the comments were meant to be helpful, but they made him feel like he could never do enough and be actually good. I was surprised by his candour and wondered if more of his classmates felt the same way about their work and my feedback. Nicol (2010) echoes this sentiment, pointing out that both teachers and students are generally unhappy with current feedback methods. Specifically, teachers feel that their students do not really use the feedback they provide. Therefore, the traditional approach of teachers just handing out feedback and expecting their students to take the feedback on board needs to change. It is not just the quality of the feedback that is important, but how students engage with it and learn from it that really matters.
Michael also added that while he appreciated that I refrained from using red ink when I marked his writing, he soon associated my purple ink synonymously with errors and felt inadequate and even nitpicked on, when I highlighted every error. This was compounded by the fact he had to show his mother his marked scripts, and she generally associated a script with less ink as being more accomplished than that of one which reflected more of my written feedback or corrections. A study by Saadat et al. (2017) appears to support this, stating that students generally dislike seeing too many red marks on their papers and often feel embarrassed when they receive corrections. Instead, the authors suggest that feedback be focused on the most important issues rather than overwhelm students by drawing their attention to every single problem.
This approach aligns with research on corrective feedback, which supports being selective with corrections to better improve student learning and feedback uptake (Bitchener et al., 2005; Ellis et al. 2008). This is also a practice I now adopt, with my marking of the first draft of my students’ writing generally more focused on whether the taught writing skill is being demonstrated, and more critical issues identified, such as language or development.

My interaction with Michael also reinforced various research findings that suggest students and educators often have different ideas about feedback, which leads to misunderstandings (Sopina & McNeill, 2015; Rae & Cochrane, 2008; Weaver, 2006). Students and teachers might interpret feedback in totally different ways (Higgins, Hartley, & Skelton, 2001), which results in a gap between what they think feedback is and how it should be used. Murphy (2000) goes as far as to establish that “depending upon the situation, the abilities of the students, and the ways students interpret [teachers’] comments, [their] good intentions may not be met” (p. 84).
This misinterpretation hampers the learning of students as they do not completely comprehend what assessment feedback is all about or how to access it (Carless, 2006; Weaver, 2006; Higgins et al., 2001). More guidance is needed for students to understand and use feedback, including the developmental and formative expectations behind it. This helps them better engage with the feedback and learn from it. Otherwise, feedback might just end up confusing them and impeding their learning opportunities (Hounsell, 2008; Carless, 2006; Weaver, 2006). Nicol (2010) also agrees, suggesting that “feedback should be conceptualized as a dialogical and contingent two-way process that involves coordinated teacher-student and peer-to-peer interaction as well as active learner engagement” (p. 503).
Hounsell (2007) further elaborates how feedback can cause students to become disengaged when it is:
1. too sparsely uninformative,
2. unconstructive, and
3. too late to be of much practical use (p. 102).
Carless (2006) further warns that feedback may actually lead to “collective disillusionment” (p. 2), for both educators and students alike. This might explain why feedback sometimes hinders learning instead of helping it, which may exacerbate because when students like Michael start feeling let down by feedback—which is a major factor in student growth, development, and learning—they might start to dislike or even reject it (Ahmed, 2014). According to Bourdieu (1984), this rejection could lead to completely disregarding feedback altogether.

Unrequited Love – I Can’t Make You Love Me, But I Can Make You Read Me
In subsequent conversations I had with Michael, I was able to pierce the veil of disillusionment regarding my feedback on his writing. To him, my comments were ‘sparsely uninformative’ as I had graded and marked his writing based strictly on the PSLE rubrics for writing which had descriptors for “content” and “language and organisation”. He elaborated that he would have appreciated it if I had also looked at whether his writing style had developed well over the year I had taught him, and if he might have done better adopting different writing techniques or stylistics, instead.
Despite what I felt were rather detailed prompts to get him to consider how he might close various developmental gaps in his writing, Michael was befuddled by some of my intentionally open-ended questions. Instead of getting him to reflect on his writing, he felt that they were ‘unconstructive’ as the feedback conversation would often end there, with him being unsure if his responses and considerations were of suitable quality and appropriate. As he felt burnt out by his frequent practices, he sometimes also felt jaded and patronised by my questions – he would rather I suggest, or even directly tell him what he could have written explicitly. My initial thought was to resist his suggestion, however, as I subscribe to a school of thought where student agency is important, and assumed that a traditional, almost didactic feedback approach Michael wanted might make him too reliant on me (Hawe & Dixon, 2014).
Nonetheless, Michael is not alone in his frustration, as Saadat et al. (2017) share that students perceive feedback discussions between the teacher and them as being crucial. However, this dialogic approach often fails to happen due to practical challenges, such as large class sizes and limited teaching time. As a result, teachers may not always have the opportunity to explain why certain corrections and editions are requested for. Hence, the authors conclude that it is essential for teachers to have sessions after giving feedback where they can discuss the reasons behind their corrections with students. Such dialogic feedback would help students gain a deeper understanding of their mistakes.
This is an approach I partially take with my classes in my teaching practice now. While it is unrealistic to engage in a one-to-one conversation with every student in class, I make it a point to rotate students whom I speak to when I offer feedback, and I always leave an invitation open to any student who wishes to engage me in dialogue about my feedback for them.
Lastly, Michael felt that he was not able to progress much as most of the compositions he was made to write covered such a wide range of various themes, that any feedback, pertaining especially to the ‘content’ aspect, was ‘too late to be of much practical use’ for subsequent writings unless they were thematically similar.

Conclusion – What Do You Want from Me?
After discussing some of the points Michael had raised with his mother, we were able to reach a compromise where he would provide a detailed outline for various composition topics, rather than write one. Michael continued to receive feedback in terms of how he was able to develop his ideas, and he soon realised he was able to adapt some of his established ideas to address similarly themed topics, which greatly reduced his frustration and the antagonism he felt from this exercise.
On the day he received his results, Michael approached me to thank me for my time – he had scored the highest band for English Language. He further revealed that he had not appreciated me writing the marks on his compositions then, as he was expected by his mother to present a trend that his marks were improving with his many practices in writing. In reality, he was able to predict that he would not be scoring well for certain pieces of writing as he had haphazardly completed them to simply fulfil his mother’s writing quota. He sheepishly added that he had secretly hoped I could have “gotten in on the act” by allowing him to choose which pieces he wanted marks for, and which pieces he did not.
We both laughed when I told him that I had wondered often if he had found the assigned marks useful, and that I had assumed that he wanted the marks as he had never said anything about them to me till that day. Michael then dropped the bombshell that he would first look at the assigned marks and if he had scored well, he would read my comments in greater detail as he felt good, whereas if he had not scored well, he would usually gloss over what I had written, or even ignore them as my comments would only serve to highlight his shortcomings!
The conversations with Michael led to me rethink how and why my students sometimes appear to be not receptive and do not integrate my feedback in their subsequent work. Many of my fellow educators and I take a lot of time to provide detailed, written feedback, and we often find the process exhausting and mentally challenging. Much of our motivation stems from having to carefully consider how to word our feedback in an accessible way because we expect that our students will read our feedback and use it to improve their learning. However, Sadler (2010) cautions that feedback should entail a “significant affective outlay on the teacher’s part” (p. 539) since feedback is usually given at the end of an exercise and tends to be in a one-sided manner. In addition, how the student might react to the feedback based on its content and tone may not be discounted, like how Michael reacted to my feedback.
Now, I explicitly tell my students to let me know if they wish to receive grades or results for their assignments, and I no longer go through their assignments with a fine-toothed comb. I am a lot more generous in highlighting the strengths they demonstrated with their writing, and stingier with their weaknesses. Instead of penning my comments as points at the end of their writing, I tabulate them in a similar format as depicted below: