Exploring students’ receptivity to feedback: A latent profile analysis

A comprehensive understanding of why feedback benefits some students and not others is still lacking. We performed latent profile analysis of students’ receptivity to instructional feedback (RIF) in a sample of 1800 secondary school students from Germany (age: M = 16.37, SD = 1.47). We described RIF profiles, predicted profile membership using established factors (cognitive ability, personality traits, prior achievement, age, and gender) that relate to feedback uptake, and examined how profile membership related to revision performance in writing. We identified three profiles distinguished by behavioral, and cognitive engagement with feedback, experiential, and instrumental attitudes towards feedback, and overall receptivity to feedback: Indifferent Nonresponders, Empty Promisers, and Committed Realists. The least successful profile was associated with having lower indicators of cognitive ability and agreeableness and higher neuroticism. We discuss these findings in light of the benefits of a person-centred approach compared to a variable-centred approach often used in past research.