| Despite the benefits of homework and teacher feedback on students' mathematics achievement, relatively limited work has been done on analyzing the effect of feedback on homework and its relationship with mathematics achievement. The purpose of this dissertation study was to examine the effects of four types of feedback on eighth grade students' achievement in mathematics: no feedback, effort-based teacher feedback on paper-and-pencil-based homework, ability-based teacher feedback on paper-and-pencil-based homework, and online programmed feedback on computer-based homework. This dissertation study also explored whether there was any difference in students' perceptions regarding and attitudes towards mathematics depending on feedback type. This study is guided by the Eccles and Wigfield's (2002) expectancy and value theory and Dweck's (2006, 2015) mindset theory. A total of 59 students from an inner-city school district in New York State participated in the study. A repeated measures experimental design was employed in which all participants were part of each feedback type for two weeks to isolate/minimize the between group variability. Repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to isolate/identify the most effective feedback strategy by including each participant in the four experimental conditions. Analysis of results revealed that there was statistically insignificant relationship between the effect of different type of feedback and academic achievement in mathematics. Although effort-based feedback appeared to be a variable of interest, different type of feedback on homework were not strongly related to achievement particularly from an inner-city school environment. However, students' attitudes towards mathematics were found to be strongly related to their success in mathematics. Moreover, homework completion and achievement were also positively related to students' mathematics achievement, whereas performance of paper-and-pencil or IXL-based groups were comparable and time spent on homework was not related to achievement. This study contributes to the current literature by investigating the relationship between the impact of different types of feedback and academic achievement in mathematics particularly from an inner-city school environment. The findings of this study provide practical implications for educators by discussing how teachers can increase the effectiveness of homework assignments for all learners. |
