Stimulating Student Growth Through Written Feedback: A Self-Study on Supporting Students’ Research Projects

Abstract

A few years ago, I attended a conference of the Dutch and Flemish Teacher Educators Association (VELON/VELOV conference). I listened to an interesting presentation of a teacher educator who talked about a self-study on her performance as a teacher educator. She spoke about her subject with passion and confidence, and it was clear that she had really improved her performance. I was impressed by her presentation. Hence, when there was an opportunity to participate in a self-study group in 2015–2016, I was really pleased! In joining this group, I expected that studying my performance as a teacher educator in a responsive group would help me to further develop my performance and my research skills, and in doing so, I expected to also develop my professional self-understanding (Berry 2009). As a teacher educator, I supported groups of students who had to conduct an action research study, while I had never done research myself after finishing my education many years ago. So I really wanted to experience myself what it was to do research and how it felt to receive feedback. I wanted to teach as I preached: to do research myself while I supported my students in their research.