The impact of rewards on the effectiveness of performance feedback in improving writing production in elementary school students

Approximately a quarter of students in classrooms across the United States meet minimum grade-level expectations in writing in national assessments (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The purpose of the present study is to elaborate on the role performance feedback can play in increasing student writing production through novel additions to established methodology. Specifically, an alternating treatments design was used to evaluate the impact of two iterations of a performance feedback intervention. The first evaluated how performance feedback (with two representations of total words written and a velocity indicator) impacts student writing production across production-dependent and production-independent variables. The second intervention combined performance feedback (presented in the same fashion as above) with rewards contingent on improved performance. Participants completed two writing prompts a week across a six to eight-week intervention phase. Results were evaluated through the visual analysis of each individual’s writing production on measures of Total Words Written, Correct Writing Sequences, and Percent Correct Writing Sequences. Supplemental social validity scales and statistical analyses of effect sizes were also included. Results suggest no differentiation in data patterns between the two intervention phases, although the intervention phase did seem to improve writing production as compared to baseline.