A Comparative Study of the Effect of Formative and Summative Evaluative Feedbacks on Students’ Self-Efficacy

Abstract

The study investigated how teachers can shape students’ self-efficacy through the evaluative feedback they provide. With the aim of determining which of summative and formative evaluative feedback methods will have greater influence on changes in students’ self-efficacy. The study population comprised of 105 University Matriculation Examination (UME) candidates undergoing a remedial course in preparation for the examination. 55 of the UME candidates were randomly selected and were invited to participate in a “Vocabulary Builder Program”. Two questionnaires and two selfconstructed tests were used for data collection in the study. The collected data were analyzed using t-test and ANOVA to test the study hypothesis. The result after the first feedback indicates a significant increase in the performance of the formative feedback group in the second test, but the increase in the summative feedback group was not significant. Also, while the different in the self-efficacy measures of the formative feedback group was significant, the difference in the self-efficacy measures of the summative group was found not to be significant, and that there was a significant interaction effect between evaluative feedback methods and self-efficacy. Hence, it is suggested that teachers should endeavour to use formative feedback through which students will be provided with valuable information for performance improvement.

Key words: Formative feedback, Summative feedback, Self-Efficacy,
Evaluative, Performance