The Role of Feedback in Developing Reflective Competence

Abstract

The role of feedback is unquestionably crucial in a teachers’ profession. In our context of teacher education giving effective feedback is also an essential skill and tool of pedagogical evaluation for developmental purposes when educating university students and future teachers. Effective feedback fosters development, gives guidance, opens windows and new opportunities. In addition, the descriptive nature of feedback has a lot more potentials and positive effect on the teacher-student relationship than traditional assessment. In addition, giving and receiving feedback can be considered the starting point of reflection. Only by having looked into ‘the mirror’ first can one face reality, review and analyse an experience and learn from it. As a result, teaching effective feedback skills through experiential learning is a very important element in reflective teacher education. Taking all the above into consideration, a lot of emphasis is put on teaching effective feedback skills at our Centre for Teacher Education of Károli Gáspár University. Moreover, we aim at changing our students’ perspectives in assessment practice through creating a more positive feedback culture. Giving and receiving feedback effectively can only be learnt by practice and reflecting on the experience. The ultimate aim is to develop our trainees’ reflective competence which serves as a basis for their continuous professional development. Our paper first aims at interpreting feedback from a pedagogical point of view and presenting our best practice in the context of developing trainees’ reflective competence. We shall also give details of everyday practice: how it is incorporated into the pedagogy, psychology and methodology seminars in preservice training. Finally, we shall discuss how and why developing feedback skills is also incorporated into our programme of school placement and mentor training.