Influencing Social Acceptance by Teacher Feedback in Grade 5-6 Students

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Social rejection at school is a serious problem and has major implications for student´s social-emotional development. Numerous studies suggest a link between school performance and social acceptance. To date, it is unclear how to reduce the risk of social exclusion for the students concerned. The current project is based on the assumption that teacher feedback could be a possible starting point for influencing social integration processes (social referencing). From social referencing theory can be derived, that students are seeking orientation in teacher feedback, when they are choosing interaction partners in everyday school life. The submitted study is set up on findings of a previous DFG-funded project (SIGNAL study), which already showed significant effects of teacher feedback on social integration for primary school students. This study aims to extend the results of the SIGNAL study to an older group (grades 5-6) and to cross-gender effects. The study is designed as an experiment with six independent variables (IV). N = 1440 subjects (grades 5/6) rate the social acceptance (dependent variable) of a virtual child presented in an experimental video. In the video, the subjects see one of three performance types (UV1: good, medium, poor school performance). After the presentation of each performance type, the subjects hear a verbal teacher feedback from the audio track of the video. The feedback focus (IV2: person, task) and the feedback valence (IV3: positive and negative) will be varied in four different feedback types. Finally, the gender of the presented child (IV4), the gender of the subjects (IV5) as well as subjects’ grade are included when evaluation the data. IV1-4 are presented as between-subject factors. The study will be analysed using a 3 (school achievement type) x 2 (feedback focus) x 2 (feedback valence) x 2 (sex referent) x 2 (sex referer) x 4 (class level) MANOVA. Five key findings are expected: (1) the school performance of the target child and (2) the feedback valence effect the social acceptance of the target child. (3) Person-oriented feedback has a higher impact on social acceptance compared to task-oriented feedback. (4) Social referencing effects on social acceptance are higher when referent and referer share the same gender, but cross-gender effects remain significant. (5) The effect of teacher feedback is still significant in higher class levels (5-6), but weaker in effectsize when compared to the data of SIGNAL study (grades 3-4). The results of the study are intended to provide concrete and practice-relevant starting points to influence social integration processes via feedback in everyday school life.