Abstract:
The study explored how teacher educators observe pre-service teachers’ classroom practice and
give feedback, after the lesson, during practicum. It attempted in identifying the strategies
they follow in giving feedback along with the challenges they encounter in doing so. This study
was conducted after a teaching practicum in a Sri Lankan National College of Education, using
an exploratory case study approach, with 05 teacher educators and 12 pre-service teachers,
which was a purposive sample. The teacher educators were interviewed using a semi-structured
interview schedule about how they played a supervisory role, following certain feedback strategies,
giving feedback to pre-service teachers during the practicum. Pre-service teachers (12) were
involved in a Focus group discussion, to gather more data and for triangulation purposes about
the kind of feedback they got. Supervisors’ written feedback, feedback on mark sheets were
collected as documentary evidence. The researcher tried out conducting pre-observational and
post- observational conferences, using a feedback framework in giving feedback to pre-service
teachers. The findings of the study revealed teacher educators in this study used traditional
feedback strategies, which are different to one another and also, they do not tend to follow
any updated information about giving effective feedback. The also revealed them encountering
several issues and challenges in giving feedback. The researcher’s feedback strategy yielded
very good results and it was formulated into a new feedback framework, getting the influence
from several feedback models. The literature provided several feedback strategies that can
be applied and try out. The study highlights the importance of teacher educators exposing
themselves to practical feedback strategies and experimenting with them to find out suitable
feedback strategies in shaping-up pre-service teachers’ professional growth. Implications for the
teacher education programs and future research studies were mentioned, while emphasizing the
necessity of providing updated guidance for teacher educators in making them efficient supervisors
providing effective feedback to make professional teachers with advanced pedagogical skills.
