04. Inclusive Education
Paper
Feedback-Memory: An Approach to Promote the Social Acceptance of Students Rarely Receiving Positive Teacher Feedback?
Markus Spilles, Christian Huber, Philipp Nicolay
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
Presenting Author: Spilles, Markus
Being socially included is a basic psychological need of human beings. However, a considerable amount of international school research has shown that not all students have positive relationships with their classmates. In the past, a large number of international studies focused on student characteristics (e.g. behavioral problems, learning problems, special educational needs, social insecurity) to explain decreased social integration (e.g. Weber et al., 2022; Krull et al., 2014; Lindsay, 2007; Chang, 2004). Furthermore, some recent field studies revealed that teacher feedback (TF) might be an important aspect that influences how students are accepted by their peers, too (Hendrickx et al., 2017; Wullschleger et al., 2020; Spilles et al., accepted). The theoretical background of these findings is the social referencing theory (Feinman, 1992) indicating that in classrooms teachers operate as an important social referent for students (Huber, 2019). Interventions that focus on the enhancement of social acceptance based on a modification of TF are not developed to date. The current study tries to close this research gap for the first time by evaluating a novel intervention that was especially developed to enhance the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF: The Feedback-Memory approach.
Feedback-Memory was conceptualized as a multi-component intervention and was inspired by the implications of the Positive Behavior Support (Anderson & Kincaid, 2005) which focuses on the development of individuals’ positive behaviors and associated interventions like Tootling (Skinner et al., 1998). Every component aims to maximize the classmates’ perception of the class teacher giving positive TF towards students rarely receiving positive TF in class. The Feedback-Memory intervention contains 4 elements: 1) Identifying students rarely receiving positive TF (target students), 2) giving positive TF to students (especially to the target students) at the end of every lesson, 3) asking classmates to remember positive TF at the end of the school day, and 4) rewarding students for remembering the TF content by an interdependent group reward contingency system. A detailed description of the intervention is given in the method section below.
Since Feedback-Memory is an approach that was recently developed and therefore not evaluated to date the present study aims to deliver first empirical indications whether that intervention could be promising to enhance the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF.
The research questions of the present study are therefore as follows:
1.Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the frequency of classmates-perceived positive TF towards students rarely receiving positive TF?
Based on the social referencing theory the classmates’ perception of TF influences the social acceptance of the feedback-receiving student (Huber, 2019). In a field study Spilles et al. (accepted) found out that the classmates’ perception of positive TF is slightly stronger correlated with social acceptance than negative TF. For this reason, Feedback-Memory was created to increase the classmates’ perception of positive TF. In order to enhance the social acceptance enhancing classmates’ perception of positive TF frequency towards target students TF should be found at least.
2. Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF?
If an intervention effect regarding the frequency of perceived positive TF could be found it might be also assumed that social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF can be increased by Feedback-Memory following the previous field studies on the correlation of positive TF and social acceptance (e.g. Hendrickx et al., 2017; Wullschleger et al., 2020; Spilles et al., accepted).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedN = 25 classes (fourth grade) and N = 531 students participated in a study implemented in German elementary schools. In every intervention and control class 5 students least likely receiving positive TF were identified based on the perceptions of their classmates. Before the intervention was implemented teachers of the intervention classes participated in a digital input on the theoretical background of the study (social referencing theory) and the practical implementation of Feedback-Memory (about 1 hour). After that, teachers implemented the Feedback-Memory intervention for 4 weeks.
Positive TF was rated for each student by his or her classmates on a single Likert-scaled item (How often does your class teacher praise your classmates? 0 = very rare, …, 4 = very often). After that, all peer ratings in a class were aggregated to an individual mean for each student. The procedure was based on the study of Spilles et al. (accepted). Social acceptance was also rated for each student by his or her classmates on a single Likert-scaled item (How much do you want to sit beside that child in class? 0 = not at all, …, 4 = very much). After that, all peer ratings in a class were aggregated to an individual mean for each student, too. The procedure was based on the sociometric method (Moreno, 1934).
Since the data of the present study is hierarchically structured (students nested in classes as well as measuring points nested in students), multilevel models (random intercept) were calculated. We calculated a regression model respectively for research question 1 (positive TF) and research question 2 (social acceptance). In both models all control variables (gender, behavior problems, learning problems) were included as well as the main effects of measuring point (1 = t1: before the intervention, 2 = t2: after the intervention), group membership (0 = control classes, 1 = intervention classes) and target students (0 = classmates, 1 = target students) as well as the statistical interactions of the last 3 variables. In order to answer both research questions, the statistical interaction of group*time*target students is taken into account. To correct for classroom-level tendencies, all control-variables were group-mean centered (Enders & Tofighi 2007). Analyses were conducted using the R packages lme4 (Bates et al., 2015) and lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIt can be seen that the target students of the Feedback-Memory group received a higher frequency of classmates-perceived positive TF after the intervention than before (t1: M = 1.49, SD = 0.50, t2: M = 1.99, SD = 0.55) while the means of the potential target students of the control group before and after the 4 weeks do not differ (t1: M = 1.65, SD = 0.49, t2: M = 1.62, SD = 0.54). Taking a look at the results of the multi-level analysis the statistical interaction of group membership, measuring point and target students (B = 0.54) is significant.
With regard to social acceptance there was also a descriptive increase of the students of the Feedback-Memory group (t1: M = 1.04, SD = 0.45, t2: M = 1.25, SD = 0.55) while the means of the potential target students of the control group are slightly decreasing (t1: M = 1.15, SD = 0.49, t2: M = 1.07, SD = 0.49). The results of the multi-level analysis reveal a significant statistical interaction of group membership, measuring point and target students (B = 0.21).
These effects suggest that Feedback-Memory could be in fact a promising approach to support the social acceptance by enhancing the classmates-perceived positive TF what goes along with the findings of Spilles et al. (accepted) who found a correlation of both variables in their cross-sectional study. It is remarkable that in the short interval of only 4 weeks has led to an increase in both variables.
ReferencesAnderson, C. M., & Kincaid, D. (2005). Applying behavior analysis to school violence and discipline problems: School wide positive behavior support. The Behavior Analyst, 28, 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392103
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. C. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
Chang, L. (2004). The role of classroom norms in contextualizing the relations of children’s social behaviors to peer acceptance. Developmental Psychology, 40, 691–702. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.40.5.691
Enders, C. K., & Tofighi, D. (2007). Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel models: A new look at an old issue. Psychological Methods, 12, 121–138. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.12.2.121
Feinman, S. (1992). Social referencing and conformity. In S. Feinman (ed.), Social Referencing and the Social Construction of Reality in Infancy (pp. 229–267). Boston, MA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2462-9_10
Hendrickx, M. M. H. G., Mainhard, T., Oudman, S., Boor-Klip, H. J., & Brekelmans, M. (2017). Teacher behavior and peer liking and disliking: The teacher as a social referent for peer status. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109, 546–558. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000157
Huber, C. (2019). An integrated model to foster social acceptance in inclusive education – socio-psychological foundations, empirical findings, and implications for everyday school life. Vierteljahresschrift für Heilpädagogik und ihre Nachbargebiete, 88, 27–43. https://doi.org/10.2378/vhn2019.art06d
Krull, J., Wilbert, J., & Hennemann, T. (2014). Social rejection of first-graders with special educational needs in general education classrooms. Empirische Sonderpädagogik, 6, 59–75.
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. B. (2017). lmerTest Package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v082.i13
Lindsay, G. (2007). Educational psychology and the effectiveness of inclusive education/mainstreaming. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 1–24. https://doi.org/ 10.1348/000709906x156881
Skinner, C. H., Skinner, A. L., & Cashwell, T. H. (1998). Tootling, not tattling. Paper presented at the twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association. New Orleans: LA.
Spilles, M., Huber, C., Nicolay, P., König, J., & Hennemann, T. (accepted). The relationship of rule compliance and teacher feedback with the social acceptance of primary school children. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaften.
Weber, S., Nicolay, P., & Huber, C. (2021). The social integration of students with social insecurity. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie. https://doi.org/10.1024/1010-0652/a000316
Wullschleger, A., Garrote, A., Schnepel, S., Jaquiéry, L., & Moser Opitz, E. (2020). Effects of teacher feedback behavior on social acceptance in inclusive elementary classrooms: Exploring social referencing processes in a natural setting. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 60, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101841
04. Inclusive Education
Paper
The Role of Teacher Feedback in the Victimization of Students with Behavioral Problems
Philipp Nicolay1, Christian Huber1, Markus Spilles1, Corinna Hank1, Johanna Krull2
1University of Wuppertal, Germany; 2University of Cologne, Germany
Presenting Author: Nicolay, Philipp
Numerous studies show that students with special educational needs (SEN) in inclusive school classes are less socially included than their peers without SEN (Avramidis, 2013; Pijl et al., 2008). This is especially true for students with behavioral problems (Monchy et al., 2004). Based on social referencing theory, several studies in recent years already showed that the relationship quality between the teacher and a student is predictive for being accepted by peers (Farmer et al., 2011; Hendrickx et al., 2017). In this context, teachers’ relationships with individual students can be understood as a reference for the remaining students who to choose as future interaction partners. One way teachers provide information about their relationship with a specific student is through public feedback (Huber et al., 2018).
Conceptually, victimization and bullying can also be considered dimensions of social inclusion (Koster et al., 2009). Accordingly, studies found that students with behavioral problems are more likely to be victims of bullying by their peers (Jenkins et al., 2017). Furthermore, teachers and their relationships with students were shown to be linked to bullying and victimization in their classrooms (Dietrich & Cohen, 2021; Marengo et al., 2021), suggesting that social referencing processes might be present here as well.
Based on these considerations, the teacher would represent a social reference in the classroom that promotes or inhibits bullying and victimization processes through their public feedback behavior. Accordingly, students who receive a lot of positive and little negative feedback from teachers would be less likely to be bullied by peers than classmates who receive little positive and a lot of negative public feedback.
Drawing on the findings on the importance of teacher feedback for the social inclusion of students, the aim of this study was to examine to what extent these findings can also be applied to bullying processes. Accordingly, we first investigated if behavioral problems are related to victimization by bullying. In a second step, we tested if this relationship is mediated by teacher feedback.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study is based on cross-sectional data on 849 students in 37 third and fourth-grade primary school classrooms. As social referencing processes are inherently subjective, we used peer ratings to measure positive and negative teacher feedback. Behavioral problems were assessed by teachers on a five-point Likert scale. Victimization by bullying was measured with the children's version of the Bullying and Victimization Questionnaire (BVF-K; von Marées & Petermann, 2010).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe found that behavioral problems were significantly related to self-reported victimization by bullying (β = 0.196, p < .001). To test the proposed mediation effect a multilevel path model was specified using Mplus. Results indicate that the association of behavioral problems and self-reported victimization by bullying is fully mediated by peer-perceived positive (indirect effect = 0.043; total effect = 0.050) and negative teacher feedback (indirect effect = 0.041; total effect = 0.048).
These results suggest that students with behavioral problems are at a higher risk of being bullied by their peers. In this context, teacher feedback seems to be a crucial protective as well as risk factor mediating this relationship. Thus, this study sheds further light on the importance of teachers for peer ecologies in their classrooms and raises the question to what degree teacher feedback can be utilized to prevent bullying.
ReferencesAvramidis, E. (2013). Self-concept, social position and social participation of pupils with SEN in mainstream primary schools. Research Papers in Education, 28(4), 421–442.
Dietrich, L. & Cohen, J. (2021). Understanding Classroom Bullying Climates: the Role of Student Body Composition, Relationships, and Teaching Quality. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 3(1), 34–47.
Farmer, T. W., McAuliffe Lines, M., & Hamm, J. V. (2011). Revealing the invisible hand: the role of teachers in children's peer experiences. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32(5), 247–256.
Hendrickx, M. M. H. G., Mainhard, T., Oudman, S., Boor-Klip, H. J. & Brekelmans, M. (2017). Teacher behavior and peer liking and disliking. The teacher as a social referent for peer status. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(4), 546–558.
Huber, C., Gerullis, A., Gebhardt, M. & Schwab, S. (2018). The impact of social referencing on social acceptance of children with disabilities and migrant background. An experimental study in primary school settings. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 33(2), 269–285.
Jenkins, L. N., Demaray, M. K. & Tennant, J. (2017). Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Factors Associated With Bullying. School Psychology Review, 46(1), 42–64.
Koster, M., Nakken, H., Pijl, S. J. & van Houten, E. (2009). Being part of the peer group. A literature study focusing on the social dimension of inclusion in education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 13(2), 117–140.
Krull, J., Wilbert, J. & Hennemann, T. (2014). Soziale Ausgrenzung von Erstklässlerinnen und Erstklässlern mit sonderpädagogischem Förderbedarf im Gemeinsamen Unterricht. Empirische Sonderpädagogik, 6(1), 59–75.
Marengo, D., Fabris, M. A., Prino, L. E., Settanni, M. & Longobardi, C. (2021). Student-teacher conflict moderates the link between students’ social status in the classroom and involvement in bullying behaviors and exposure to peer victimization. Journal of Adolescence, 87, 86–97.
Monchy, M. d., Pijl, S. J. & Zandberg, T. (2004). Discrepancies in judging social inclusion and bullying of pupils with behavior problems. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 19(3), 317–330.
Nicolay, P. & Huber, C. (2021). Wie Schulleistung und Lehrkraftfeedback die soziale Akzeptanz beeinflussen: Ergebnisse einer Experimentalstudie. Empirische Sonderpädagogik, 13(1), 1-10.
Pijl, S. J., Frostad, P. & Flem, A. (2008). The social position of pupils with special needs in regular schools. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 52(4), 387–405
von Marées, N. & Petermann, F. (2010). Bullying- und Viktimisierungsfragebogen (BVF). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
04. Inclusive Education
Ignite Talk (20 slides in 5 minutes)
Effective Feedback as a Strategy to ensure Service-Learning for all
Celina Salvador-Garcia1, Maria Maravé-Vivas2, Teresa Valverde-Esteve1, Carlos Capella-Peris1
1University Jaume I of Castellón, Spain; 2University of Valencia, Spain
Presenting Author: Salvador-Garcia, Celina;
Valverde-Esteve, Teresa
Service-Learning (SL) is a methodological approach that combines learning and community service. As a result, it emerges as an educational experience through which students participate in a community service activity that is closely connected to the curriculum of a subject. SL favours the necessary interrelationship between university and society while creating a genuine link between theory and practice (Chiva-Bartoll et al., 2021). However, putting SL to work is not an easy task, since every student is different as well as their way of learning (Strom & Martin, 2017).
SL has been applied many times in the teacher education field, and previous literature highlights it numerous benefits among which we may mention: the promotion of attitudes, values and practices that support inclusive educational approaches in schools (Carrington et al., 2015; Maravé-Vivas et al., 2022), the development of a deeper understanding of inclusion, functional diversity and confidence in their ability to manage inclusive educational experiences (Ashton & Arlington, 2019; Chambers, 2017), or developing positive attitudes towards special educational needs (Barton-Arwood et al., 2016; Wilkinson et al. 2013), among others.
Nevertheless, for SL to work, proper guidance must be provided to ensure pre-service teachers’ learning and making the most of the experience. Pre-service teachers are diverse. Each of them possesses diverse strengths and weaknesses that will inevitably influence the way they approach, engage in and learn from the SL experience. As a result, teacher educators applying SL have the duty to attempt to ensure that all students make the most of their learning experience.
Reflection is considered as a fundamental pillar of SL, given that it enables students to establish connections between the service provided and the contents of the subject (Dubinsky, 2006; Hatcher et al., 2004). To include it effectively, the role of teacher educators is of utmost importance. Among other issues, providing effective feedback to the pre-service teachers may greatly favour the achievement of the pre-established objectives (Schartel, 2012; Winstone & Carless, 2019), given that effective feedback may work as a formative, regulatory, pedagogical and communicative tool. Consequently, providing effective feedback when applying SL may not only ensure proper reflection on the part of pre-service teachers, but also help ensure that teacher educators attend to the diversity of the students, since they will be constantly guided through the learning and experiential process.
Against this backdrop, this communication aims at presenting an educational innovation project that aspires to properly attend to diversity by providing effective feedback when applying SL in teacher education courses. Particularly, it displays how effective feedback will be included in a SL programme. To do so, the programme will incorporate the three types of feedback that, according to Cano et al. (2020), encompass effective feedback: feed-up (given at the beginning to let students know where they should direct their efforts), feedback (given along the process to enable learners to adjust the learning process) and feed-forward (given during and at the end of the process to promote to reflection on how to use learning in future tasks).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedObjectives of the innovation project
The general objective of this innovation project is to improve some of the subjects applying SL of the teacher education Degree at the Universitat Jaume I. This main aim is divided into the specific objectives presented below:
-To propose innovations and improvements in the organization of SL in different subjects of the Degree.
-To improve SL by incorporating effective feedback to promote reflection and proper attention to diversity.
-To establish specific guidelines for SL management that are generalizable, regardless of the content to be worked on and the type of subject.
Service-Learning organization
Pre-service teachers will be grouped, and each group will design and implement their respective SL projects. To do so, the phases established by CLAYSS (2016) will be followed. This means that pre-service teachers will have to identify a social need, propose an action plan to tackle, put this plan into action and share what they have done. In addition, there will be a constant process of reflection, systematization and assessment that will be accompanied by teacher educators’ feedback.
Innovation project stages
Phase 1:
o Meeting with different social groups to listen to their needs so that teacher educators know different options they can present to the students.
o Feed-up to provide pre-service teachers with clear ideas of what they are expected to do and how to carry it out.
o SL seminars aimed at explaining what this pedagogical approach consists of.
o Brainstorming ideas for the SL projects, bearing in mind the needs expressed by the social groups with which contact was made.
Phase 2:
o Evaluation of the SL proposals through participatory discussion.
o Contact and communication with the participating social groups to validate the proposals.
o Determination of strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses of the different projects.
o Providing pre-service teachers with feedback so that they can adjust their projects considering the information collected.
o Adjustment and implementation of SL projects.
o Establishment of dialogue among groups to share experiences, clarify doubts, as well as provide feedback and guidance to the groups.
o Follow-up with regular meetings to provide feedback and feed-forward and carry out a systematized analysis of the situation of each one of the projects.
Phase 3:
o Organization of a final session as a way to provide feed-forward to share the experiences of each group.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsSL has been shown to be an effective pedagogical approach to promote inclusive skills among pre-service teachers (Carrington et al., 2015; Chiva-Bartoll et al., 2020). However, literature reports that teachers themselves may struggle to implement SL for all students (Dunbar & Yadab, 2022), given that there are not magic recipes in education, that will be appropriate for every single learner. Despite this, teacher educators may make use of a range of strategies to enhance the process of guidance when pre-service teachers are engaged in a SL project to promote proper reflection while attending to their students’ diversity.
In this sense, integrating effective feedback strategies to SL may be of great value to foster deep reflections and ensure proper attention to diversity. Therefore, this innovation project will be applied in several subjects of a teacher education Degree in order to address the issues aforementioned. To examine whether the present innovation project has achieved its aims or not, an ad hoc rubric will be created and applied. If the integration of effective feedback strategies in the SL programme is successful, the phases and steps of this innovation project might be extrapolated to other Degrees, as long as they are adjusted to their specificities and particular contexts. As a result, the present innovation project might become a SL model that helps educators of different fields to properly attend to diversity in their teaching practices.
ReferencesAcknowledgments
This work was supported by the Universitat Jaume I through the CIGE/2021/019, USE (18G002-770) and UJI-A2022-11 projects.
References (400 words)
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Cano, E., Pons-Seguí, L., & Lluch, L. (2020). Feedback a l'educació superior. Universitat de Barcelona.
Carrington, S., Mercer, K. L., Iyer, R., & Selva, G. (2015). The impact of transformative learning in a critical service-learning program on teacher development: Building a foundation for inclusive teaching. Reflective Practice, 16(1), 61-72.
Chambers, D. J., & Lavery, S. (2012). Service-learning: a valuable component of pre-service teacher education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(4), 128-137.
Chiva-Bartoll, Ò., Capella-Peris, C., & Salvador-García, C. (2020). Service-learning in physical education teacher education: Towards a critical and inclusive perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching, 46(3), 395-407.
Chiva-Bartoll, O., Maravé-Vivas, M., Salvador-García, C., & Valverde-Esteve, T. (2021). Impact of a Physical Education Service-Learning programme on ASD children: A mixed-methods approach. Children and Youth Services Review, 126, 106008.
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Dubinsky, J. (2006). The role of reflection in service learning. Business Communication Quarterly, 69(3), 306-311.
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Strom, K. J., & Martin, A. D. (2017). Becoming-teacher: A rhizomatic look at first-year teaching. Springer.
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