Examining the mindsets toward students’ writing competence and feedback-giving practices of Chinese university English writing teachers

Abstract

Second language (L2) writing teachers’ personal beliefs can shape their feedback-giving practices. As a burgeoning area in L2 education, the mindsets framework offers us a novel theoretical perspective to analyze the impact of personal belief on feedback-giving practices. With 288 university English writing teachers from 28 provinces in China, this study examined their growth and fixed mindsets, as well as the five types of feedback-giving practices: scoring feedback, written corrective feedback, process-oriented feedback, expressive feedback, and peer and self-feedback. Paired sample t-test reported that teachers held significantly higher levels of growth than fixed mindsets. Repeated measures analysis of variance results indicated that expressive feedback was the most frequently used feedback approach, whereas written corrective feedback the least used approach. Structural equation modeling results found that growth mindsets were positively associated with all five types of feedback approaches, while fixed mindsets were only positively related to written corrective and process-oriented feedback. We interpreted the underlying mechanisms behind the varied associations between growth versus fixed mindsets with the five types of feedback-giving practices, and proposed suggestions for L2 writing teacher education.