| dc.description.abstract | Feedback is deemed as one of the essential elements to enhance learning in higher education when students make use of feedback comments on their work. The paradigm shift in feedback studies has further highlighted the capacity feedback-as-dialogue can contribute to assisting students’ understanding of feedback, increasing students’ responsibility and activeness in feedback practices, and possibly extending feedback influence on learning beyond higher education context.
However, these benefits cannot be fully enjoyed if students do not engage in feedback dialogues. Hence, this thesis intends to shed light on students’ intention to read and use academic feedback as well as their willingness to engage in feedback dialogues (the outcome variables). Since individual difference variables are proven to be correlated to students’ responses to feedback, this study wishes to contribute to the field by possibly identifying other individual difference variables that have a correlation with students’ responses to feedback. Due to the particular power relationship between teachers and students in higher education, students’ individual power distance (IPD) is chosen as the predictor variable.
IPD builds on the cultural dimension of power distance (PD) developed by Hofstede et al. (2010), who noticed behavioral differences between people from low and high PD cultures. Relating to students’ responses to feedback, it can thus be assumed that international students with different cultural backgrounds will differ in their IPD. Consequently, they may be more or less willing to engage in feedback dialogue and use the provided comments. Furthermore, there is a recognized vulnerability of international students despite their growing higher education enrollment in the past decades. Considering the reasons above and that postgraduate feedback experience is under-researched, this thesis focuses on international master’s students studying in public Norwegian higher education institutions.
This study used an online questionnaire with a built-in vignette to investigate the relationship between the variables by analyzing the quantitative data collected through the survey. The findings show that international master’s students with high IPD are slightly less likely to engage in feedback dialogues. Additionally, those who are more willing to engage in feedback dialogues are also relatively more likely to read and use feedback. Furthermore, the willingness to engage in dialogue with the feedback giver is relatively higher among students studying in Mathematics and Natural Science than those studying Humanities. Even though there is no relationship between the measured feedback behaviors and other background variables such as nationality, this study still illuminates that Hofstede’s model is not suitable to be used at the individual level and the assumption of homogeneity among students from the same country should be avoided in future studies.
Collectively, this study provides valuable insights to feedback givers, academics, and policy makers. The discovery also raises the awareness of teacher-student power relationship, the use of ‘power’ in feedback practices, and of the possible encouragement difference in feedback dialogue engagement between disciplines. It is encouraged to use the improved version of this thesis model for further investigation in another country context, with different student groups, or between higher education institutions that differ in their teacher-student relationship policies. Finally, it would be fascinating to see whether and how feedback dialogues can improve students’ psychological feedback processes and remove the barriers that prevent them from using feedback. | en_US |