Abstract:

Considering feedback as a crucial professional development strategy through which teacher candidates acquire new perspectives regarding the teaching profession, the current study aims to develop a holistic feedback framework for pre-service teachers and to test its applicability, and also examine the effects of different feedback forms in internships. This phenomenological study argues that the use of feedback from multiple sources, such as peer discussion, comments from the mentors and visual hints from video recordings, is likely to lead to more effective self-reflection and professional development for pre-service teachers. The relevant qualitative data was collected via individual interviews, peer feedback, and video based self-interview forms. The participants also narrated their feeling, ideas and their personal experiences related to self, peer and digital video based feedback. The results revealed that the participants gained professional development by noticing their own positive aspects as well as deficiencies from the eyes of others; both the constructive and critical holistic feedback made the participants became aware of the preliminary teaching skills and competencies related to instructional management within a real class via holistic feedback. Being one of the few studies on holistic feedback towards teacher education, the study argues that the use of feedback from multiple sources has the potential to improve the self-reflective and critical thinking skills of pre-service teachers, as well as to prepare them for the real teaching environment at school.

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