Feedback in teacher education: mentor discourse and intern perceptions

Abstract

Giving and receiving feedback are essential activities in student teaching. This paper explores the strategies that mentors adopted in giving post-observation feedback to the interns in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and these teaching interns’ perceptions of the feedback they received. The discourse analysis of six post-observation meetings that involved six mentors and five MA student interns shows how the mentors engaged the interns in the interaction and made their feedback more acceptable to these teaching interns. The mentors’ strategies include the questioning techniques, as well as patterns in the delivery of compliments, criticisms and suggestions. Analysis of the recorded mentors’ feedback and follow-up interviews with the interns reveal that they appreciated many of the mentors’ strategies in giving feedback. The paper concludes with conditions which seem to foster constructive post-observation interactions.

Keywords:

• feedback
• mentor discourse
• mentoring
• student teaching
• teacher education