The analysis of communicative purposes of feedback given by teachers from different disciplines in written tasks at University level, in the context of FONDECYT project 1180586 named Eficacia de los comentarios escritos de ajuste al género (CEAG)

Abstract

Providing feedback to students is an essential part of their learning process. This study analyzes the communicative purposes in the written feedback provided by two teachers to their students’ drafts of a task. This research aims to determine the communicative purposes that teachers employ when providing written feedback. The design of this investigation is qualitative since the data analyzed was non-numerical information. Nevertheless, this research also includes quantitative aspects since we quantified percentages that correspond to the rate of each communicative purpose in both of the disciplines. The data of the FONDECYT project 1180586 named Eficacia de los comentarios escritos de ajuste al género (CEAG) was used. This research evidences that there is a variation among the communicative purposes in the disciplines of Engineering and Humanities, with a clear predominance of some communicative purposes in each one. In the case of Engineering it was Demonstrating knowledge and understanding, and for the Humanities discipline it was Preparing for professional practice. Nevertheless, both disciplines converge on the purpose of Developing power of informed and independent reasoning, proper from written feedback. For further research, a larger sample with more disciplines and/or more than one major of the same discipline could be analyzed to obtain a deeper understanding of the topic.