Feedback as a tool in practicum-based learning to teach: A ‘Gift’ given or a ‘Shared’ practice?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Feedback is widely viewed as a powerful tool, yet a challenging professional undertaking, in initial teacher education. This paper explored how feedback was used to mediate pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) learning, in the form of a qualitative study that illuminates both the perspectives of HEI tutors, school mentors and PSTs and the actual feedback provision process taking place in an EFL practicum in Vietnam. Data revealed a diversity of ways through which feedback was provided by mentors. Most prominent seemed to be that of ‘detailed’ but ‘authoritative’ feedback, the latter denoting a transmission approach whereby mentors were positioned as ‘knowledge givers’ and PSTs as ‘knowledge receivers’. Drawing on the reflective practitioner perspective, the paper, however, argues that in a Confucian-influenced culture where PSTs might be accustomed to the ‘listener’ role like Vietnam, the monological feedback could be an effective supplement to the dialogical, reflective feedback widely advocated in Western contexts.