ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the role of feedback in Chinese secondary school students’ engagement at school was investigated with the backdrop of the Confucian Heritage Culture – the cultural tradition that has historically influenced the school culture in some East Asian and South-East Asian societies, including Mainland China. Taking a social-cultural perspective, feedback is considered to be a social interaction that assists students’ constructive knowledge building with their peers and teachers. Conducted in two provinces of Mainland China, this study tested the relationships between four important feedback orientations and student engagement. The four feedback orientations describe students’ perceived usefulness of feedback, competence, and accountability to apply teacher feedback to improvement performance, and social awareness to use feedback for establishing good student-teacher relationships. Two samples of students (316 secondary vocational students and 339 mainstream secondary students) participated in this study. The results showed that feedback accountability showed the strongest predictive effect on school engagement. In the two samples of students, feedback accountability was also found as a significant mediator between feedback social awareness and student engagement. Implications of the utility of students’ feedback orientations in explaining the impact of teacher feedback on student engagement are discussed.
