The Role of Self-Regulation Feedback on Students’ Self-Beliefs Systems in Physics

Teacher feedback is frequently described as one of the most important influences on student learning at many levels of education, yet few studies explore feedback from the student perspective. There is also a paucity of examination of the effects of continuing professional development (CPD) upon teacher feedback. Moreover, written feedback is often privileged over verbal feedback, both within the research literature and by students and teachers within classroom settings. This thesis reports on a longitudinal quasi-experimental study, exploring whether a CPD intervention emphasising the role of teachers’ verbal self-regulation and process feedback impacted positively on students’ self-belief systems (comprising self-concept, self-efficacy, anxiety, mindset) in the context of physics. The self-belief constructs were measured by pre- and post-intervention surveys and compared to a cohort whose teachers received no intervention. The study shows that the CPD intervention had a positive impact on changing teacher feedback for the two intervention classes, as well as improvement of self-concept, self-efficacy and anxiety (but not mindset) in the intervention classes when contrasted with the two comparison classes. However as shown in other studies, even highly committed teachers experience difficulties in transferring training content to real-life instructional practice. Analysis of the self-belief data provides support for both existing studies which operationalise these as separate constructs, and those which indicate instructor feedback has a mediating effect upon student self-beliefs. Using a three-level constructed typology of feedback, findings also suggest that verbal feedback has a much higher frequency within the classroom discourse than other studies have observed, and moreover, that it has a role within the emotional space of a classroom in impacting self-beliefs. Additionally, qualitative insights into students’ and teachers’ perspectives of experiencing the intervention are presented as a contextualised case study of authentic classroom practice.