The Interplay of Agency and Instruction in Written Corrective Feedback: Reflections and Future Directions

Introduction

As this special issue comes to a close, it offers an opportunity to reflect on the insights it has brought together, the progress made in the field of written corrective feedback (WCF), and its broader implications for writing pedagogy and research. Once primarily associated with the correction of linguistic errors, WCF has evolved into a complex and multifaceted area of inquiry. Today, such research addresses not only instructional practices and teacher decision-making but also the important role of learner agency, how learners interpret, engage with, and act on the feedback they receive. This shift reflects a growing recognition of WCF as a dynamic and central element of writing instruction, particularly in second language (L2) contexts, where both the teacher input and the learner response affect the learning process.

This special issue was conceived to advance our understanding of WCF by exploring its dual dimensions: instructional choices and learner engagement. It features selected research presented at the 1st International Conference on Written Corrective Feedback in L1 and L2 (WCF23) held at the Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya (Spain) in 2023. The fact that a conference on WCF was possible to convene in the first place is a testament to a large and growing body of research and pedagogical interest in the practice that is central to L2 writing classrooms and language writing development more broadly. The conference also served as an opportunity to enhance and, potentially, strengthen, the research-practice dialogue on this "interface issue" (Ellis, 2017) that continues to preoccupy teachers and researchers alike. Together, these contributions highlight the importance of viewing WCF not simply as a teacher-driven act, but as a dialogic process shaped by the interplay of agency and instruction.

This understanding aligns with a well-established view in both L1 and L2 learning -that feedback lies at the heart of any learning process. Decades of research shows that feedback can serve a range of functions: it can correct errors, clarify misunderstandings, reinforce what learners are doing well, and offer guidance for future improvement. However, there is broad agreement in the literature that the effectiveness of feedback is not guaranteed by its presence alone. It largely depends on who provides the feedback, how it is delivered, and whether learners understand and use it as intended (Nassaji & Kartchava, 2017, 2021). After all, "feedback given but not heard is of little use" (Hattie & Clarke, 2019, p. 5). In other words, for feedback to truly support learning, it must be meaningfully received, interpreted, and acted upon by the learner.

To maximize the impact of WCF, it is essential to consider not only the source of feedback, typically the teacher, but also the recipient, namely the learner, and the broader instructional context in which the feedback occurs. These considerations are especially critical in the domain of WCF research, which has evolved significantly over the past two decades. Early studies focused primarily on whether written corrective feedback was beneficial for improving writing accuracy, examining issues such as the relevance of error correction to writing development (e.g., Lee, 1997), the overall value and effectiveness of WCF (e.g., Ferris, 1999), and comparisons among different types of corrective strategies (e.g., direct vs. indirect feedback) (e.g., Karim & Nassaji, 2020; Suzuki, et al., 2019;) and the scope of correction (e.g., focused vs. unfocused feedback) (e.g., Lira-Gonzales & Nassaji, 2023; Rahimi, 2021; Shintani & Ellis, 2013). Over time, however, the field has expanded to explore more contextual and interactional dimensions of WCF, including teacher beliefs and practices (e.g., Amrhein & Nassaji, 2010; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019; Shankar Sinha & Nassaji, 2021), learner attitude and engagement (e.g., Kim et al., 2020), and the affordances of technology in delivering and processing feedback (e.g., Nassaji & Kartchava, 2019; Shi & Aryadoust, 2024).

Building on this evolving landscape, the five articles designated for this special issue cover several original and developing themes in WCF research, together confirming the positive role for attention to form in learning to write. These contributions can be broadly grouped into two interrelated strands: three articles investigate learner engagement and agency in response to WCF, and two examine teacher practices and perspectives, with particular attention to how feedback is shaped by instructional contexts, teacher beliefs, and institutional conditions. In what follows, we reflect on the key insights offered by these studies, beginning with the learner-focused contributions before turning to the research on teachers' roles in the feedback process.

Learner Engagement and Agency in WCF

Three of the contributions focus on learner agency, particularly through the lens of learner engagement with WCF. While earlier research emphasized the teacher's corrective actions, recent studies have shown that the impact of feedback depends largely on how learners interpret, respond to, and make use of the feedback they receive (e.g., Han & Hyland, 2015; Karim & Nassaji, 2019; Lira-Gonzales et al., 2021; Lira-Gonzales & Valeo, 2023; Zheng & Yu, 2018). Much of this work has drawn on Fredricks et al.'s (2004) tripartite conceptualization of engagement along three interrelated dimensions of behavioral (revisions in response to WCF), cognitive (awareness of WCF and use of metacognitive strategies), and affective (emotions about/towards WCF received) dimensions. However, these studies have generally overlooked the dimension of agentic engagement, a concept recently introduced by Lee (2024, p. 663) to capture learners' proactive efforts to regulate their own learning through heightened metacognitive awareness and strategic interaction with feedback. Agentic engagement involves learners' conscious planning, active interpretation of task demands, and self-regulation in processing and applying feedback.

The three contributions on learner engagement in this issue specifically address agentic engagement with WCF -and thus, add to the much-needed focus in WCF research agenda. Lira-Gonzales et al. examine collaborative processing of WCF as a means of fostering agentic engagement, while Michaud et al. explore how the timing of feedback influences learner engagement during collaborative writing tasks. The study by Reyes and Rodríguez-Gonzalo, in turn, investigates how group revision activities can support the development of writing skills among Spanish-speaking learners, offering further insights into how social interaction can mediate agentic engagement with WCF.

In their study, Lira-Gonzales et al. set out to determine whether the mode of feedback processing, individual versus collaborative, makes a difference in learners' engagement with teacher-provided WCF. French as a Foreign Language learners in Peru wrote four descriptive essays and were assigned to either work alone or in pairs to interpret the feedback they received. Results showed no differences in the mode for the affective and behavioural engagement types but a deeper cognitive engagement when interpreting feedback with a peer.

While Lira-Gonzales et al.'s findings reinforce the learners' positive attitudes towards WCF and willingness to engage in revision regardless of whether the feedback is processed individually or not, it does point to a richer and more cognitively engaged processing of feedback when learners collaborate. Specifically, the results suggest that collaborative feedback processing fosters deeper cognitive engagement, likely because learners are required to negotiate meaning, clarify understanding, and co-construct revisions, all of which promote more active and reflective engagement with the feedback content. This richer form of engagement may enhance not only the learners' understanding of the linguistic features targeted in the feedback but also their overall metalinguistic awareness.

Despite these promising findings more research is needed to replicate and extend this work in order to substantiate the hypothesis that collaborative processing leads to superior engagement with WCF. Future studies could explore whether these effects hold across different language proficiency levels, task types, and feedback formats, and could examine which specific dimensions of engagement (cognitive, behavioral, or affective) are most impacted by collaborative versus individual feedback processing. Such investigations would help delineate the parameters under which collaboration becomes most effective and provide pedagogical guidance for integrating peer-based feedback tasks into L2 writing instruction.

With a focus on the timing of WCF and learner attention to accuracy during a collaborative writing task, Michaud et al. recruited three groups of university-level learners of French to describe and comment on a social issue depicted in a video they watched together. Writing in dyads, the learners composed all the parts collaboratively. One of the groups received feedback as they wrote (i.e., immediate feedback group), with learners instructed to respond to the teacher's feedback in real time. The second group (i.e., the delayed feedback group) received feedback on their writing one week after the collaborative writing and had ten minutes to discuss it. The third group (i.e., the controls) did not receive feedback during the study. Results indicate an advantage for the delayed feedback condition in terms of learner engagement with the provided WCF (as evidenced by the level of discussion observed) and show the superiority of the immediate feedback condition in increasing accuracy over time. Like in Lira-Gonzales et al.'s study, collaborative discussions of WCF here appeared to augment both the depth of the learners' focus on accuracy and the resultant quality of the writing produced. Yet, it is the timing of WCF that seems to make a difference not only in how long learners can sustain attention on language form (with the delayed condition allowing for reflection on form without the pressure of immediate revision), but also in terms of the support made available to improve writing accuracy. Hence, while this study is the first to empirically identify the differences between the WCF timing conditions during collaborative writing, more research is needed to understand the reasons why learner engagement with WCF may be mediated by the timing of feedback discussions.

Addressing agentic engagement from the L1 perspective, Bea Reyes and Rodríguez- Gonzalo conducted an instrumental case study to determine the effectiveness of a guided group revision technique (in the form of a didactic writing sequence) on the ability of the native speakers of Spanish to identify writing problems in their own and peer texts, suggest revisions, and engage in relevant metalinguistic discussions. With the goal of describing the processes observed during the collaborative revisions, undergraduates in the University of Valencia early childhood and primary school teacher training program were tasked with writing a biographical text about a family member and sharing a portion of it to collaboratively revise as a group, with the aim of producing a blog that encapsulates the biographical entries of all participants. Analyses of the video recording of the revision sessions demonstrated that group revisions are possible, even necessary, across various stages of the writing process (including, planning), are valuable to resolving languagerelated issues (i.e., lexical, syntactic, discursive) among learners of different writing abilities, and are instrumental in promoting metalinguistic awareness. To yield these benefits, however, a positive mindset towards errors and feedback is paramount as are certain considerations in how the technique is administered and for how long. The ecological perspective advanced by this study along with the context-specific implications cannot be overlooked as they highlight the importance of and need for WCF in both L1 and L2 settings. Opportunities to engage learners in discussions of what they are to write, why, and how align with the calls for research that considers the viability and effectiveness of incorporating agentic engagement in group-centered instruction.

Teacher Feedback Practices and Perceptions

Although the impact of the teacher on WCF provision and learner engagement with it is generally accepted, little research has investigated writing teacher feedback literacy that includes a range of competencies in feedback (e.g., knowledge, skills, attitudes, goals) that teachers need to establish and continuously develop. Understanding teachers' feedback choices and their impact on learner writing and agency is essential for improving practice. Studying teachers in their own classrooms can help build this awareness in meaningful, context-specific ways.

This special issue includes two papers that have done just this. While Birello et al. examined how teacher WCF decisions impacted the errors identified, corrected, and revised, Mamad and Vigh compared learner and teacher attitudes towards WCF in a Moroccan setting.

For their study, Birello et al. engaged two experienced university-based teachertrainers working with highly proficient Catalan speakers training to become primary school teachers in Spain. Depending on the trainer, the trainees wrote either an argumentative text or an article for an educational magazine in Catalan, received feedback on their first drafts, and were then given a week to revise and produce a second version of the text. Despite differences in WCF approaches, one trainer using varied techniques and the other favoring indirect strategies, both addressed a high number of errors (19.6 per text on average), focusing mainly on discursive, morphosyntactic, and spelling issues, with less attention to lexical errors. Trainees incorporated most feedback (80%), especially when it was direct and easier to act on. Indirect feedback, though intended to promote reflection, was used the least. Importantly, the trainer with a clearer, simpler error classification system saw higher feedback uptake, highlighting how feedback literacy influences WCF decisions. Contextually, these results add to what is currently known about WCF practices in Spanish teacher preparatory programs and point to the need for more research that is ecologically relevant and sufficiently nuanced for the given environment.

The study by Mamad and Vigh considers both teachers and learners in terms of how they view and act upon written feedback (WF), which they distinguish from WCF and define as broader range feedback that is delivered in the written form and encompasses various feedback types, including comments on content, organization, and language use (p. 68). Situating the investigation within a largely under-researched Moroccan university setting, the authors surveyed both learners and teachers of English to gather insights into the dynamics of WF between the two groups, suggesting that an alignment in the views can positively affect the learning environment and enhance the effectiveness of feedback. The 80-item survey contained two dimensions (of perceptions and reported practices), two scales (representing product and process approaches), and nine subscales that ranged from WCF techniques to content-based WF on micro aspects of writing.

Results reveal both alignment and divergence between teachers' intended written feedback (WCF) practices and learners' perceptions of them, underscoring the importance of context-sensitive approaches and tailored tools to explore these perspectives. Given the close connection between teacher and learner roles in the feedback process, further research is needed to examine the underlying factors that shape teacher beliefs and practices, and how these influence learner engagement with WCF over time (Nassaji et al., 2023).

Such research, whether large or small-scale, should involve case studies and teacher-led research initiatives (e.g., Kartchava et al., 2021; Ulrich-Verslycken & Kartchava, in press) to illuminate how teachers design and adjust feedback for individuals versus groups, and how their strategies evolve in response to learners' changing needs across tasks or over a term. The broader instructional and institutional context, including the role of assessment, also shapes WCF practices. When feedback serves primarily summative purposes, teachers may be less inclined to adjust their practices, and learners may be less likely to engage deeply with the feedback.

Future Directions for Research and Practice

In describing the works featured in this special issue, we attempted to highlight their individual contributions while situating them within both established and emerging trends in the WCF field. Taken together, the studies present a compelling case for situating WCF within broader pedagogical and sociocultural frameworks. They challenge simplistic views of feedback as either effective or ineffective and instead offer insights into the conditions under which feedback supports learning. Several key implications emerge.

First, there is a need for more research that adopts an ecological perspective on WCF, one that considers the local context of teaching and learning, the goals and values of participants, and the affordances of classroom interaction. Such research should explore how feedback is embedded in the ongoing routines of writing instruction and how it interacts with other instructional practices such as peer review, conferencing, and portfolio assessment. In this context, current research calls for a more dialogic and participatory approach to feedback, one that recognizes students as active agents in the learning process. Teachers should be encouraged to engage learners in feedback discussions, co-construct criteria for success, and foster a classroom culture where feedback is seen as a tool for growth rather than correction. Attention should also be paid to how feedback operates across diverse learning contexts, including multilingual, heritage, and academic writing settings, (e.g., Lira-Gonzales & Nassaji, 2019), and how sociocultural and curricular factors mediate its impact. Only through such comprehensive and situated approaches can WCF research generate pedagogically meaningful insights and contribute to the design of responsive, inclusive, and effective writing instruction that supports learner development in tangible and sustainable ways.

Second, the studies underscore the value of incorporating learner engagement as a central construct in WCF research. Engagement, whether cognitive, affective, or behavioral, is a crucial mediator of feedback effectiveness. Future work should continue to develop robust ways of measuring engagement and explore how different types of feedback (e.g., direct vs. indirect, written vs. oral, individual vs. collaborative) shape learner responses. Such research should include both first and second language learning contexts and attend to the roles of key participants-teachers and learners-as well as supportive elements such as technology and professional development.

Although not directly addressed in this special issue, the growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in language education presents a promising and complex new avenue for WCF research. Tools such as automated writing evaluation systems, generative language models, and digital platforms for collaborative writing offer novel opportunities, and raise important questions, about how feedback is delivered, interpreted, and acted upon. Their effectiveness depends on careful integration into pedagogical frameworks and on ongoing critical evaluation of their impact on learner autonomy, engagement, and motivation. Future research should consider how these technologies can be meaningfully and ethically employed in feedback practices.

Finally, the role of teachers' feedback literacy (e.g., Lee, 2021; Nassaji & Kartchava, 2017) and the institutional conditions that support or constrain effective WCF provision must be central to ongoing investigations. Feedback literacy includes not only competence in providing clear and purposeful corrective feedback, but also an understanding of how to adapt feedback strategies to the specific needs, goals, and affective responses of learners. Equally important is the understanding of the institutional and structural conditions that either support or hinder the implementation of effective WCF. These may include time constraints, assessment policies, class size, curricular demands, and access to professional development. Investigating how such factors shape teachers' feedback choices and their ability to engage learners meaningfully can provide critical insights into the challenges of fostering pedagogically sound feedback practices.

Conclusion

In sum, the studies included in this special issue collectively reaffirm the centrality of written corrective feedback in language education while expanding the boundaries of how it is understood, implemented, and studied. By exploring a range of contexts, methodologies, and participant perspectives, they not only deepen our understanding of WCF but also open new avenues for inquiry. As researchers and practitioners continue to address the complexities of providing meaningful feedback, we hope this issue serves as a springboard for further research, grounded in classroom realities, informed by theory, and responsive to evolving educational technologies.

References

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