Browsing by Author "Berlin, Kathy"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Can Relational Feed-Forward Enhance Students' Cognitive and Affective Responses to Assessment?
    (University of Calgary, 2021) Hill, Jennifer; Berlin, Kathy; Choate, Julia; Cravens-Brown, Lisa; McKendrick-Calder, Lisa; Smith, Susan; Health Sciences, School of Health and Human Sciences
    Assessment feedback should be an integral part of learning in higher education, but students can find this process emotionally and cognitively challenging. Instructors need to consider how to manage students' responses to feedback so that students feel capable of improving their work and maintaining their wellbeing. In this paper, we examine the role of instructor-student relational feed-forward, enacted as a dialogue relating to ongoing assessment, in dissipating student anxiety, enabling productive learning attitudes and behaviours, and supporting wellbeing. We undertook qualitative data collection within two undergraduate teaching units that were adopting a relational feed-forward intervention over the 2019-2020 academic year. Student responses were elicited via small group, semi-structured interviews and personal reflective diaries, and were analysed inductively using thematic analysis. The results demonstrate that relational feed-forward promotes many elements of student feedback literacy, such as appreciating the purpose and value of feedback, judging work against a rubric, exercising volition and agency to act, and managing affect. Students were keen for instructors to help them manage their emotions related to assessment, believing this would promote their wellbeing. We conclude by exploring academic strategies and pedagogies that position relational instructor feedforward as an act of care, and we summarize the key characteristics of emotionally resonant relational feed-forward meetings.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Describing Emerging Adulthood in Individuals with Intellectual Disability Using Photo-Elicitation Methodology
    (2022-05) Gano, Laura Ann; Munk, Niki; Berlin, Kathy; Kaushal, Navin; Stanton-Nichols, Kathleen
    For adults with intellectual disability life as an adult is more constrained, with fewer opportunities; the literature indicates that intellectual disability negatively impacts people across multiple life domains. Despite this adverse influence, it is largely unknown how those with intellectual disability describe their experiences with adulthood. The current study utilizes photo-elicitation interviewing methodology in an attempt to rectify this deficit. Photo-elicitation research methodology uses images, rather than text, to construct queries and prompt responses. This approach is generally undertaken in disability studies to accommodate participants’ verbal and cognitive challenges, to make abstract concepts concrete, to provide opportunity for meaningful participation, and to empower subjects within the research environment. In this study, photo-elicitation interviewing was employed with a sample of 11 young adults with intellectual disability to discover how adulthood might differ in comparison with typical peers. Participants shared their perceptions of adulthood and experiences related to family, learning/education; community/volunteering/spiritual or faith community/employment/vocation; housing/neighborhood; friends/supportive relationships/personal connections; hobbies/fun; personal health. Results replicate participants’ endorsement of the same broad criteria for adulthood attainment as typified by normative peers in the emerging adulthood literature: acceptance of responsibility for oneself; independent decision-making; financial independence. Salient emergent findings specific to the study population indicated that adulthood differs in comparison with typical peers in relation to (1), advocacy efforts to increase awareness and value of the disability experience; (2), the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic; (3), the need for continued access to support services. Access to services can only be achieved through increasing awareness of this need, recognizing the importance of this need, and prioritizing policy change to meet this need. Participants in this study have indicated that they are more than up to the task of increasing awareness through advocacy, yet it falls to social institutions such as education and government to recognize this need for ongoing support and to prioritize this need by implementing service provision policy change.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Emotions Experienced by Instructors Delivering Written Feedback and Dialogic Feed-Forward
    (ISSOTL, 2023-01-16) Hill, Jennifer; Berlin, Kathy; Choate, Julia; Cravens-Brown, Lisa; McKendrick-Calder, Lisa; Smith, Susan; Health Sciences, School of Health and Human Sciences
    Understanding the emotions experienced by higher education instructors related to assessment feedback, how instructors understand student emotions, and how instructors might manage these emotions positively, can help to secure the educational benefits of feedback. In this research, we aimed to explore the emotional responses that instructors experienced through the giving and receiving of assessment feedback. We undertook qualitative data collection, carrying out individual semi-structured interviews with instructors from three universities who had administered a dialogic feed-forward intervention on one of their teaching units. The full interview transcripts were analysed inductively using thematic analysis. Five main themes emerged from the interview data: 1. Summative written feedback aroused largely negative emotions in instructors because they felt distanced from their students; 2. Instructors experienced a broad range of emotions related to dialogic feed-forward encounters, emerging from their proximity to students; 3. Dialogic feed-forward, as an affective encounter, was emotionally challenging for instructors; 4. Dialogic feed-forward built strong learning relationships between students and instructors, strengthening students’ sense of belonging; 5. Dialogic feed-forward was transformational for instructors as educators. We consider the implications of our findings for instructors and wider assessment and feedback practices, including emotional labour, promotional reward, and instructor professional development.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Exploring the Emotional Responses of Undergraduate Students to Assessment Feedback: Implications for Instructors
    (University of Gloucestershire, 2021) Hill, Jennifer; Berlin, Kathy; Choate, Julia; Cravens-Brown, Lisa; McKendrick-Calder, Lisa; Smith, Susan; Health Sciences, School of Health and Human Sciences
    Summative assessments tend to be viewed as high stakes episodes by students, directly exposing their capabilities as learners. As such, receiving feedback is likely to evoke a variety of emotions that may interact with cognitive engagement and hence the ability to learn. Our research investigated the emotions experienced by undergraduate students in relation to assessment feedback, exploring if these emotions informed their learning attitudes and behaviours. Respondents were drawn from different years of study and subject/major. A qualitative approach was adopted, using small group semi-structured interviews and reflective diaries. Data were analysed thematically and they revealed that receiving feedback was inherently emotional for students, permeating their wider learning experience positively and negatively. Many students struggled to receive and act upon negative feedback, especially in early years, when it was often taken personally and linked to a sense of failure. Negative emotional responses tended to reduce students’ motivation, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Some students, especially in later years of study, demonstrated resilience and engagement in response to negative feedback. By contrast, positive feedback evoked intense but fleeting emotions. Positive feedback made students feel cared about, validating their self-worth and increasing their confidence, but it was not always motivational. The paper concludes with recommendations for instructors, highlighting a need to communicate feedback carefully and to develop student and staff feedback literacies.