Abstract

Teachers occupy an interesting space in society: they have a role in both shaping and perpetuating social practice in their roles as educators. Great teaching is made up not just of subject knowledge and instructional practices, but also of the teacher’s ability to create a climate for learning in line with their personal and professional beliefs (Coe et al, 2014). Teachers, however, only join their profession with the support of their extended communities of practice, begging the question of who teaches the teachers, and how? In an era where research-informed practitioners are shaped through both their exposure to and the practice of educational research, the role of formal teacher educators is key. The act of carrying out school-based research assignments can be seen as situated learning, where the newcomers engage in a process of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991), but we know that feedback on the articulation of the knowledge base of teaching is important in the development of teachers (Shulman, 1987). On a university-led course of postgraduate teacher training, this feedback is given in written form. This study investigates the nature of written feedback provided as feed-forward targets by teacher educators to trainee teachers on a negotiated individual study module where they carry out action research on their own teaching, in their own classrooms. It follows on as the next stage in a larger natural experiment study that has already confirmed the correlation between formative and summative feedback on this programme (Hidson and Elliott, 2019). By analysing attainment data, the percentage changes from formative to summative grading outcomes at four data points across two modules for one cohort (n=66) have been calculated, but more importantly, written feedback comments have been coded thematically to establish an indicative typology. The extent to which trainees may be said to have understood and addressed feedback is considered. These findings are presented to share insights into the differential effectiveness of this pilot of the initial use of feed-forward targets in relation to summative outcomes.