THESIS Seminar - why don't they just listen to feedback?
Presenter: Dr. Rob Nash, Aston University
Abstract
Most people prefer to perform well than to perform badly. And one of the primary aims of giving feedback is to help people to enhance their performance. So why do our students so often ignore, resist, and reject the feedback we give them? Over the past 8 years, I’ve carried out a variety of pedagogical and psychological research centred around this question, exploring perceived and actual barriers that limit students’ effective engagement with feedback. In this talk, I will discuss some insights from my own research, and from several other domains of psychology. I will also share my own mixed experiences of trying to implement what I’ve learned into my own teaching practice. One of the most important take-home messages is this: we need to understand resistance to feedback not as a student problem, but as a people problem!