Exploring Teacher Educators’ Feedback Strategies in Practicum: A Case Study of Pre-Service Teacher Development

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.