The feedback struggle bus: examining students’ basic needs, resilience, burnout, and feedback literacy

Students often struggle to use, make sense of, and emotionally manage feedback. Though these behaviors are frequently linked to students’ motivation, motivation alone may not fully explain these challenges. This study explores whether resilience may function as a mediating mechanism between students’ basic learning needs and their feedback literacy, and whether this mediation may vary according to students’ levels of burnout. Drawing from construal-based perspectives, this study conceptualizes resilience and burnout as psychological processes that may shape students’ ability to translate intentions into meaningful action. Survey data from 330 participants suggested a conditional process: resilience most strongly mediated these relationships at moderate levels of burnout, partially at low burnout, and was substantially attenuated at high burnout. Notably, direct effects between self-efficacy and instructor-relatedness on feedback literacy emerged in the high burnout group, suggesting that students may rely less on resilience-based processing and more on concrete classroom cues under conditions of elevated burnout. Based on these findings, we propose four ways instructors may better support struggling students.