Investigating Teacher's Feedback on Creative Writing: A Qualitative Synthesis Study of feedback on two student cases

Abstract

Creative writing instruction in classrooms can bring numerous benefits to students. However, for students to develop their potential as creative writers in educational settings, evaluation of their work is necessary. One common and effective way to evaluate students’ writing is to provide written feedback. The current study aims to first investigate characteristics of the feedback given by 84 primary school teachers from a municipality in the south of Norway on the two students' creative writing and second, explore to what extent teachers provided individualized feedback to two different student cases. The teachers' feedback was categorized inductively in a thematic analysis based on three main categories: praise, informational, and correctional feedback, each consisting of subcategories. Results showed that the most frequent feedback given was informational feedback, followed by praise and corrective feedback. The finding of the teacher's feedback is likely to support the concept of creative writing assessment, especially in the originality and quality of language use. The findings also showed that over half of the teachers gave similar feedback to the two different student profiles, which means teachers should consider more often providing feedback that is tailored to each student's needs in order to improve their performance.

Creative writing instruction in classrooms can bring numerous benefits to students. However, for students to develop their potential as creative writers in educational settings, evaluation of their work is necessary. One common and effective way to evaluate students’ writing is to provide written feedback. The current study aims to first investigate characteristics of the feedback given by 84 primary school teachers from a municipality in the south of Norway on the two students' creative writing and second, explore to what extent teachers provided individualized feedback to two different student cases. The teachers' feedback was categorized inductively in a thematic analysis based on three main categories: praise, informational, and correctional feedback, each consisting of subcategories. Results showed that the most frequent feedback given was informational feedback, followed by praise and corrective feedback. The finding of the teacher's feedback is likely to support the concept of creative writing assessment, especially in the originality and quality of language use. The findings also showed that over half of the teachers gave similar feedback to the two different student profiles, which means teachers should consider more often providing feedback that is tailored to each student's needs in order to improve their performance.