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Articles Conference Reviews |
D.36 Student PerceptionsD.36 Student Perceptions of Teacher Response: Are We Being Understood? In her segment, titled “Student Perceptions of Teacher Response: Are We Being Understood?” Summer Taylor described her research project to study instructor comments on student writing, specifically exploring teachers’ intentions and students’ perceptions and asking: “Is it possible to ascertain what percentage of comments are accurately interpreted by students?” Taylor undertook the study to characterize comments and to suggest best practices. She noted that previous research on student reception showed that they prefer directive and text-specific comments, but she wondered whether those comments produce revisions or result in student learning. According to Taylor, research-to-date doesn’t sufficiently examine the extent to which students understand the comments instructors are writing. Taylor characterized instructor responses and compared her findings to accepted best practices for responding to student writing. The most common student response to an unrecognized instructor comment was “no idea.” This evoked laughter and nodding heads in the audience. Taylor went on to note that her study showed students were able to infer instructor intent for 74% of comments overall. The least recognized comments were the least common – 40% of students misunderstood comments about “coherence,” confusing coherence with development of ideas. About 1/3 of students misunderstood style comments, and they often disagreed with the instructor’s recommendations. The study showed that students’ responses to “form comments” are acknowledgment and dismissal, as Taylor noted, “Oh, that’s just one of those rules that gets marked a lot.” Interestingly, Taylor also found that 62% of praise comments are recognized but generally dismissed; students, she found, focus on the negative comments to a greater degree than praise. Taylor cautioned that instructor feedback that consists of only a mark (arrow, circle, etc.) is generally not well understood. At this point, she advised against simply leaving checks in the margin of a paper as a method of feedback. Perhaps the most interesting parts of this presentation were the findings that contradict best practices: Positive comments are not well understood, and often are not perceived as helpful. Taylor recommended making text-specific, explicit comments and ended with a call for more research to explore the relationship between understanding and revision, transference, and faculty training. |