How students' perception of feedback influences self-regulated learning: the mediating role of self-efficacy and goal orientation

Feedback plays an important role in self-regulated learning. However, little is known about how students' feedback perception affects their self-regulation process in learning. This study adopted the social cognitive perspective to investigate how students' feedback perception is related to their self-regulated learning, along with the mediating effects of self-efficacy and goal orientation. A total of 236 7th grade students participated in this study. Self-reported data regarding feedback perception, self-efficacy, achievement goals, performance goals, and self-regulated learning were collected. The results revealed that students' perception of teachers' feedback directly and positively predicted students' self-regulated learning. Self-efficacy and achievement goals mediated the effect of feedback perception on students' cognitive strategy use and self-regulation, while performance goals showed no significant influence. Such findings illustrated the importance of feedback in self-regulation and empirically supported some of the reciprocal interactions among environmental, personal, and behavioral factors in social cognitive theory.