An investigation of the nature of feedback given to pre‐service English teachers during their practice teaching experience

Abstract

This study seeks to understand how university supervisors and cooperating teachers approach giving feedback during the practice teaching experience to pre‐service English language teachers and the nature of feedback they give through post‐lesson conferences and written evaluations. The data for the study come from field notes of classroom observations, post‐lesson conferences between student teachers and university supervisors, and student teachers and cooperating teachers, written evaluation sheets and documents. The findings indicated that the university supervisors encouraged reflection during their post‐lesson conferences and helped the student teachers to evaluate their lessons more critically. The cooperating teachers’ feedback was found to be more situation specific by focusing on certain instances about the classroom. This study also discussed different modes of giving feedback (oral feedback through post‐lesson conferences and written feedback through evaluation sheets) to teacher candidates during practice teaching. Finally, this study makes suggestions for the supervisors and cooperating teachers about providing constructive feedback for the student teachers during practice teaching.

Keywords:

• feedback in post‐lesson conferences
• modes of feedback
• reflective teaching
• university supervisors
• cooperating teachers
• pre‐service English language teachers
• supervisory conference

Acknowledgement

This research study is supported with funding from Boğaziçi University Research Fund under the project number 05D601.