It’s a Balancing Act: A Self-Study of Teacher Educators’ Feedback Practices and the Underlying Tensions

Authors

Sherry Dismuke, Boise State UniversityFollow
Esther A. Enright, Boise State UniversityFollow
Julianne A. Wenner, Boise State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Contribution to Books

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

While there are documented benefits of full-time faculty participating in clinical supervision, challenges, such as conflicting time demands, personal bias, adherence to common evaluation forms, and power differentials, can create impediments to effective practicum supervision (Ciuffetelli Parker & Volante, 2009). We, as teacher educators, turned to reflection through self-study to investigate our professional practice with the aim of better understanding and overcoming those challenges. Like Bullock (2017), we utilized teacher candidates’ perspectives to disrupt, confirm, and extend our narratives. We focused on the practice of giving teacher candidates feedback on their developing teaching during their clinical placement in elementary schools. Feedback is central to our work as liaisons (i.e., university-based supervisors) with teacher candidates in the field and critical to their learning and improvement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Through this self-study, we sought to answer the following research question: What underlying tensions constrain our feedback, as liaisons, to our teacher candidates in clinical placements? How can we better negotiate those tensions to make this work sustainable for full-time faculty?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Information

Dismuke, Sherry; Enright, Esther A.; and Wenner, Julianne A.. (2018). "It’s a Balancing Act: A Self-Study of Teacher Educators’ Feedback Practices and the Underlying Tensions". Pushing Boundaries and Crossing Borders: Self-Study as a Means for Researching Pedagogy, 385-392.