Currently reading Zhou et al. (2025) on “Students’ motivations for feedback seeking: the value of combined monitoring and inquiry”

How do the experiences that students make when seeking feedback influence their motivation for doing it again?

Zhou et al. (2025) investigate their question through a quantitative study combined with data from 27 interviews with students. They use self-determination theory to understand student responses, specifically two types of extrinsic motivation: “Identification reflects voluntarily adopting a behaviour because the individual recognises and accepts its value in reaching a desired goal. Introjection is a form of internal control that individuals enact on themselves because they feel a drive to gain approval or avoid feelings of guilt”

There are generally two feedback seeking strategies:

• Inquiry is about asking others for feedback. Students are willing to ask for feedback when they think the potential feedback-giver is willing and supportive, but not so much when this is not the case. When asking peers for feedback, this often becomes more of an interactive conversation than just one-way feedback and can strengthen relationships.
• Monitoring is using available external or internal feedback through clues from the learning environment, such as results of exams. It thus minimises social interaction and seems less “risky”.

Monitoring can be done through several different strategies, external (reviewing learning materials and searching for information, observing and imitating peers, or comparing process or outcome with peers) and internal (reflecting on past experiences, identifying self-weaknesses, or concealing self-identified weaknesses). Most of those are motivated by identification, but comparison with peers and concealing self-identified weaknesses are motivated by introjection.

Zhou et al. (2025) conclude that “Teachers are encouraged to design pedagogic sequences that offer motivating opportunities for feedback seeking, and support students in regulating motivations and emotions“. They suggest a sequence in which “the student reflects on performance (internal monitoring); tackles self-identified problems (internal and external monitoring); elicits from suitable external sources and incorporates views (inquiry); and then integrates all inputs into the work (feedback uptake).”

I found it really interesting that they point out that they found “Chinese culture-specific data, pertaining to ‘peer competition’ or ‘teachers as authorities’, that we have not emphasised in our psychologically-oriented rather than culturally-focused research“, because of course their findings — like all findings in the field — depend a lot on context. It would have been super interesting to see a discussion of all of their results with reference to Chinese culture!

Zhou, H., Carless, D., & Nieminen, J. H. (2025). Students’ motivations for feedback seeking: the value of combined monitoring and inquiry. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2596351

Featured image from right after my morning dip a couple of days ago. And here are some more from the walk there, the dip, and the walk back home…