The subjects were 106 8th grade students, ages 13-14, in a California middle school. The test was designed so that students would take the poster-designing assessment and be able to choose whether they would receive critical or confirmatory feedback. Then at the end of the assessment, they would be given a test on what feedback they remembered getting from the animal characters that provided said feedback.



The Impact of Critical Feedback Choice- Study 1

What should be noted in this paper is that critical feedback is contrasted with confirmatory feedback. 

- critical feedback is constructive criticism, designed to make the student think about their work and potentially revise it and improve and learn from there 
- confirmatory feedback may be considered positive and even informative about what the student did right but it is not likely to make the student think about what might be improved

University of California, Berkeley

The research paper discussed in the following nodes explores the effect that seeking out critical feedback can have on a student's performance, memory, and learning. It discusses past research regarding feedback which has had mixed results when it comes to proving the effect it can have on a student. What is also mentioned is the idea that previous research on feedback focused on students being given feedback rather than deliberately choosing to hear it. This paper seeks to remedy that lack of research through two studies, in which students seek out feedback from a virtual poster-designing task, the same one described in the paper linked to this one: "Educating and Measuring Choice". Both studies show a positive effect of critical feedback on students. 

The Impact of Critical Feedback Choice- Summary

Cutumisu, Maria & Schwartz, Daniel. (2017). The impact of critical feedback choice on students’ revision, performance, learning, and memory. Computers in Human Behavior. 
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.06.029. 

The Impact of Critical Feedback Choice on Students' Revision, Performance, Learning, and Memory- Citation Reference

The Impact of Critical Feedback Choice- Feedback Details

This article is very similar to the one discussed in the previous linked node, sharing the same authors and focuses on a study that is discussed in the article "The Impact of Critical Feedback Choice", where middle school students went through a virtual poster designing game and chose to receive confirmatory or critical feedback, and then could choose to redesign their poster or not. The difference is that this article goes into detail about the in-school performance effects linked with choosing to receive critical feedback as well as the performance of the students in the virtual task also linked to choice of feedback.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After