Effects of Mindset Beliefs, Prior Experience, and Negative Feedback Choice on Learning

Providing teachers with feedback is beneficial for their professional development. However, the impact of teachers choosing feedback on learning is unknown. In addition, research on the relationship among teachers’ choice of feedback, mindset belief, prior experience, and learning is very limited. The purpose of the current study is to fill these gaps. Eighty-five teachers from an elementary school in China participated in the study. They chose to receive either negative or positive feedback on the concept maps they created in a professional development workshop. Step-wise regression analysis was conducted to examine how their mindset beliefs and prior experience moderated the impact of their choice of negative feedback on learning. The results indicated that the relationship between teachers’ negative feedback choice and learning was moderated by their mindset beliefs and prior experience. These findings are discussed in terms of the implications, limitations, and future directions.