More than just a grade: Factors influencing secondary students’ engagement with digital feedback

The increasing use of technology in secondary education has shifted teacher feedback practices to digital environments. While digital feedback offers many promising affordances, the factors that influence how students engage with and use digital feedback are not well understood. Previous research indicates that digital feedback poses unique challenges for engagement. New paradigm feedback models seek to identify processes and actions that promote feedback engagement. However, these models require further study in digital and pre-higher education contexts. This qualitative single-case study investigated the factors influencing secondary students' engagement with digital feedback. Data included 24 student interviews conducted across four grade levels (9th through 12th grade) and multiple content areas. Thematic analysis revealed that students' grade orientation influenced how they conceptualize, decode, and value feedback. The establishment and use of feedback routines, including providing opportunities to engage in dialogic interactions, emerged as a key factor influencing feedback engagement. Finally, several social-affective factors, such as student-teacher rapport, emotional responses to feedback, and peer support, were significant in mediating feedback engagement. Implications for classroom practice include recommendations for designing dialogic feedback routines that precede the final evaluation of student work. These recommendations emphasize the importance of establishing structured feedback processes that support meaningful student-teacher dialogue and engagement.