The role of feedback acceptance and gaining awareness on teachers’ willingness to use inspection feedback

Abstract

Feedback acceptance and use are often seen as requirements for teacher change after a school inspection. Non-educational research, however, points to the role of feedback recipients' willingness to use the feedback received as an intermediate phase between their acceptance and use of the feedback. It also postulates the importance of a recipient's awareness gained from the feedback, cognitive responses and individual characteristics. However, quantitative evidence in school inspection context to support this theory has been non-existent. This study draws on quantitative data collected from 687 teachers in 80 Flemish primary schools that had recently been inspected. By means of SEM, we build a research model that focuses on the relationship between cognitive responses, teachers' feedback acceptance, awareness gained from the inspection feedback received, and teachers' willingness to use inspection feedback. In addition, the relationship between individual teacher characteristics and the different components in the research model were also taken into account. The analysis reveals that teachers' willingness to use the feedback is predominantly explained by the perceived relevance of the inspection feedback. In addition, we found statistically significant relationships between teachers' willingness to use inspection feedback and feedback acceptance, and also between teachers' willingness to use inspection feedback and awareness gained from inspection feedback too.

Representations of student performance data in local education policy

“…Moreover, studies on the work of mid-central and district-level authorities regarding data use typically highlight the variations in different schools' approaches towards data use (Jimerson, 2016). Examples include whether a data use policy exists and, if so, whether data use is a prioritised, supported or coerced activity by local school authorities (Kerr et al, 2006;Miller, 2010;Quintelier et al, 2020). Researchers also focus on how different local and organisational cultures frame, foster or hinder data use in schools; for example, studies have explored how a high degree of coerciveness linked to control weakens the development of productive organisational data use cultures (Herzog-Punzenberger et al, 2020;Wayman et al, 2012;Young, 2006;Young & Kim, 2010;).…”