Ignore learners’ psychological engagement with written feedback at your peril: a longitudinal exploration in higher education setting

Research in written feedback (WF) engagement has proliferated in the recent decade. However, most studies are centred around learners’ engagement on the feedback, rather than with feedback. Learners’ psychological attributes with WF are argued to be the cornerstones of explicit manifestations of engagement on WF. This study offers novel contributions to body of research by (i) validating a learners’ psychological engagement with WF model that contains the sub-constructs of affective (motivation to use feedback, MO), behavioural (feedback action, FA) and cognitive (perceived usefulness of feedback, PU) and (ii) identifying the temporal order of the relationships of variables using a two-wave cross-lagged panel modelling design. Key findings reveal that while MO and FA possess moderately strong reciprocal effects, PU fails to predict either MO or FA. It is hoped that this paper can cultivate more interest in investigating psychological engagement with feedback and its development.