Book Description

This dissertation, "The Effects of Different Evaluative Feedback on Student's Self-efficacy in Learning" by Song'en, Chen, 陳頌恩, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: 2 Abstract for thesis entitled "The Effects of Different Evaluative Feedback on Student's Self-Efficacy in Learning" Submitted by Chan Chung Yan, Joanne for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in June 2006 Self-efficacy is an individual's perceived capability to perform a specific task. In Bandura's self-efficacy theory, four sources of self-efficacy have been identified including enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, physiological and affective states. In educational settings, students' self-efficacy is a key component that enables academic success and teachers play an important role in shaping students' self-efficacy. Through their evaluative feedback, teachers define mastery experience and provide social feedback to students. The main goal of this research is to shed light on how teachers can shape students' self-efficacy in vocabulary acquisition through the evaluative feedback they provide. The selection of evaluative feedback is based on the common practices employed by teachers, including summative feedback, formative feedback, norm-referenced feedback, and self-referenced feedback. The choice of vocabulary acquisition task as the target of investigation serves a practical purpose as vocabulary building is one of the fundamentals of language acquisition and a prerequisite for academic achievement. Having a strong command of vocabulary can enhance students' capabilities in both reading and writing. To maximize internal and external validities, this research used controlled experiments within real classroom settings. The 3 current research comprises of two studies that compared effects of four types of evaluative feedback on students' vocabulary acquisition self-efficacy. In Study 1, a random sample of Grade 8 students (N=79) received training and tests on using prefixes. The results of the tests were designed to induce a failure situation. Every student then received either formative or summative feedback. Students were asked to fill out two questionnaires with regard to self-efficacy. The results showed that summative feedback was more harmful to students' self-efficacy than formative feedback. The implication is that the difference in evaluative feedback had an impact on students' perception of their self-efficacy even though both groups of students evaluated both the quality of instruction and the learning environment as the same, and also encountered the same academic setback in terms of the number of correct answers they got. In Study 2, a random sample of Grade 7 students (N=77) went through similar procedures as in Study 1 except that students received either self-referenced or norm-referenced feedback. The results showed that while students in the self-referenced feedback condition experienced an overall increase in self-efficacy, those in the norm-referenced feedback condition showed a decrease. The implication is that self-referenced feedback was more beneficial to students' self-efficacy than norm-referenced feedback. Implications for efforts to revise the assessment system are discussed. The outcome of this research can provide educators and teachers with information on how to structure academic contexts that would be beneficial to students' self-efficacy, which in turn will enhance their learning motivation and achievement outcomes. (439 words) DOI: 10.5353/th_b3709991 Subjects: