Being socially included is a basic psychological need of human beings. However, a considerable amount of international school research has shown that not all students have positive relationships with their classmates. In the past, a large number of international studies focused on student characteristics (e.g. behavioral problems, learning problems, special educational needs, social insecurity) to explain decreased social integration (e.g. Weber et al., 2022; Krull et al., 2014; Lindsay, 2007; Chang, 2004). Furthermore, some recent field studies revealed that teacher feedback (TF) might be an important aspect that influences how students are accepted by their peers, too (Hendrickx et al., 2017; Wullschleger et al., 2020; Spilles et al., accepted). The theoretical background of these findings is the social referencing theory (Feinman, 1992) indicating that in classrooms teachers operate as an important social referent for students (Huber, 2019). Interventions that focus on the enhancement of social acceptance based on a modification of TF are not developed to date. The current study tries to close this research gap for the first time by evaluating a novel intervention that was especially developed to enhance the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF: The Feedback-Memory approach.

Feedback-Memory was conceptualized as a multi-component intervention and was inspired by the implications of the Positive Behavior Support (Anderson & Kincaid, 2005) which focuses on the development of individuals’ positive behaviors and associated interventions like Tootling (Skinner et al., 1998). Every component aims to maximize the classmates’ perception of the class teacher giving positive TF towards students rarely receiving positive TF in class. The Feedback-Memory intervention contains 4 elements: 1) Identifying students rarely receiving positive TF (target students), 2) giving positive TF to students (especially to the target students) at the end of every lesson, 3) asking classmates to remember positive TF at the end of the school day, and 4) rewarding students for remembering the TF content by an interdependent group reward contingency system. A detailed description of the intervention is given in the method section below.

Since Feedback-Memory is an approach that was recently developed and therefore not evaluated to date the present study aims to deliver first empirical indications whether that intervention could be promising to enhance the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF.

The research questions of the present study are therefore as follows:

1.Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the frequency of classmates-perceived positive TF towards students rarely receiving positive TF?

Based on the social referencing theory the classmates’ perception of TF influences the social acceptance of the feedback-receiving student (Huber, 2019). In a field study Spilles et al. (accepted) found out that the classmates’ perception of positive TF is slightly stronger correlated with social acceptance than negative TF. For this reason, Feedback-Memory was created to increase the classmates’ perception of positive TF. In order to enhance the social acceptance enhancing classmates’ perception of positive TF frequency towards target students TF should be found at least.

2. Does playing Feedback-Memory increase the social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF?

If an intervention effect regarding the frequency of perceived positive TF could be found it might be also assumed that social acceptance of students rarely receiving positive TF can be increased by Feedback-Memory following the previous field studies on the correlation of positive TF and social acceptance (e.g. Hendrickx et al., 2017; Wullschleger et al., 2020; Spilles et al., accepted). 

N = 25 classes (fourth grade) and N = 531 students participated in a study implemented in German elementary schools. In every intervention and control class 5 students least likely receiving positive TF were identified based on the perceptions of their classmates. Before the intervention was implemented teachers of the intervention classes participated in a digital input on the theoretical background of the study (social referencing theory) and the practical implementation of Feedback-Memory (about 1 hour). After that, teachers implemented the Feedback-Memory intervention for 4 weeks. Positive TF was rated for each student by his or her classmates on a single Likert-scaled item (How often does your class teacher praise your classmates? 0 = very rare, …, 4 = very often). After that, all peer ratings in a class were aggregated to an individual mean for each student. The procedure was based on the study of Spilles et al. (accepted). Social acceptance was also rated for each student by his or her classmates on a single Likert-scaled item (How much do you want to sit beside that child in class? 0 = not at all, …, 4 = very much). After that, all peer ratings in a class were aggregated to an individual mean for each student, too. The procedure was based on the sociometric method (Moreno, 1934). Since the data of the present study is hierarchically structured (students nested in classes as well as measuring points nested in students), multilevel models (random intercept) were calculated. We calculated a regression model respectively for research question 1 (positive TF) and research question 2 (social acceptance). In both models all control variables (gender, behavior problems, learning problems) were included as well as the main effects of measuring point (1 = t1: before the intervention, 2 = t2: after the intervention), group membership (0 = control classes, 1 = intervention classes) and target students (0 = classmates, 1 = target students) as well as the statistical interactions of the last 3 variables. In order to answer both research questions, the statistical interaction of group*time*target students is taken into account. To correct for classroom-level tendencies, all control-variables were group-mean centered (Enders & Tofighi 2007). Analyses were conducted using the R packages lme4 (Bates et al., 2015) and lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017).

It can be seen that the target students of the Feedback-Memory group received a higher frequency of classmates-perceived positive TF after the intervention than before (t1: M = 1.49, SD = 0.50, t2: M = 1.99, SD = 0.55) while the means of the potential target students of the control group before and after the 4 weeks do not differ (t1: M = 1.65, SD = 0.49, t2: M = 1.62, SD = 0.54). Taking a look at the results of the multi-level analysis the statistical interaction of group membership, measuring point and target students (B = 0.54) is significant. With regard to social acceptance there was also a descriptive increase of the students of the Feedback-Memory group (t1: M = 1.04, SD = 0.45, t2: M = 1.25, SD = 0.55) while the means of the potential target students of the control group are slightly decreasing (t1: M = 1.15, SD = 0.49, t2: M = 1.07, SD = 0.49). The results of the multi-level analysis reveal a significant statistical interaction of group membership, measuring point and target students (B = 0.21). These effects suggest that Feedback-Memory could be in fact a promising approach to support the social acceptance by enhancing the classmates-perceived positive TF what goes along with the findings of Spilles et al. (accepted) who found a correlation of both variables in their cross-sectional study. It is remarkable that in the short interval of only 4 weeks has led to an increase in both variables.

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