Why Aren’t They Listening? Student Reticence in the Application of APA Style in Response to Faculty Corrective Feedback

Faculty regularly provide corrective feedback (CF) for assignments authored by students, highlighting errors in grammar and style with the hope that the direction will help learners recognize their mistakes and strive to correct them in subsequent work. But when the same errors appear in later assignments, faculty might question why the oversights continue despite their earnest efforts to point out discrepancies. Beyond questions of proficiency, learner inaction in response to instructor feedback could easily be misinterpreted as being a question of learner motivation.

Broadly defined, reticence is a lack of willingness or desire to do or accept something: a disinclination, unwillingness, or reluctance (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). There are a range of potential reasons for learner reticence that suggest that it might not be solely a result of learner motivation or proficiency.

This presentation examines the results of a recent exploratory investigation concerning factors that influence online learner reticence toward the application of corrective feedback relative to the writing style sanctioned by the American Psychological Association. The research question for the qualitative study considered reasons for why some graduate students demonstrate a level of disinclination toward actively responding to corrective instructor feedback relative to the use of APA style in written assignments.