Addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum

Abstract

COVID-19 affected the teaching practicum placement of approximately 650 fourth year BEd Foundation Phase student teachers at University N in April and July 2020. The teaching practicum is seen as a purposeful, organised, supervised, mentored and assessed educational activity required for the completion of a teacher education programme. During the teaching practicum, the provision of feedback from teacher educators as well as mentor teachers forms an integral part of the learning process and enriches student teachers' learning experiences. However, student dissatisfaction with feedback during the teaching practicum presents a "wicked" problem that requires a strategic partnership approach between the university and partnership schools as well as between the triad partners of teacher educator, mentor teacher and student teacher. The purpose of this exploratory case study is to provide an overview of student teachers' perspectives on the innovative use of a social annotation platform to ensure greater collaboration on the "wicked" problem of feedback by all partners during the "learning from practice" component of the teaching practicum. The results indicated that student teachers, teacher educators as well as mentor teachers were actively engaged "on the same page" with constructive dialogic feedback that assisted student teachers to make crucial adjustments to the core practice of explaining/modelling content.

Digital technology adaptation and initiatives: a systematic review of teaching and learning during COVID-19

“…A range of digital technologies were used and adapted—across synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning, as well as in assessment (Table 1 ). Some studies focused on particular technologies and adaptations (Nel & Marais, 2021 ), but more commonly research was focused on the overall experiences of adaptation to online learning. The clarity of the level of acceptance and use of specific technologies pre-COVID-19 at each institution was provided in only a few studies, consequently making it challenging to determine the pre- and post-experiential changes in experience in response to adaptation of technology use.…”

“…In terms of use of platforms and applications, the results also showed that enhanced efficiency in handling assignments for staff (Chen et al, 2021 ), as well as increased use of online formative and summative tests were evident (Laher et al, 2021 ). The use of different forms of content and complementary apps was evident through the use of tools such as Net.Create and Perusall (Craig et al, 2020 ; Nel & Marais, 2021 ). However, a proliferation of different apps and lack of consistency between different lecturers and courses created challenges for the student experience (Ghazi-Saidi et al, 2020 ; Oliveira et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Enabling social connections should be supported by online learning, for example through break-out rooms (Calder et al, 2021 ), collaborative digital tools (Craig et al, 2020 ; Nel & Marais, 2021 ), and doing so in a creative manner (Rizvi & Nabi, 2021 ). Collaborative group projects (Ariza et al, 2020 ) have such potential, but staff must plan on group formation in team or zoom (Craig et al, 2020 ) reflecting these are new, shared learning spaces.…”

Empowering active learning: A social annotation tool for improving student engagement

“…At the university level, its positive impact on student motivation, engagement, learning and community building has been investigated in subjects including statistics (Nokelainen et al, 2005), second language Spanish courses (Thoms & Poole, 2017), teacher education (Nor et al, 2013), EAL courses (Tseng et al, 2015), second language Chinese courses (Thoms et al, 2017), physics (Miller et al, 2016) and politics (Clarke, 2019). With the pandemic dramatically altering course delivery in the tertiary education sector, researchers have been investigating social annotation tools, such as Perusall, in various fields, including philosophy (Biro, 2021), pre‐service teacher education (Nel & Marais, 2021) and engineering (d'Entremont & Eyking, 2021).…”

Technology-Enhanced Assessment Feedback on Preservice Teachers’ Core Teaching Practices

“…2 The forced changes brought about due to the pandemic and the digital shift have allowed many teacher educators to rethink one of the "wicked problems" of the work-integrated learning (WIL) (i.e., the teaching practicum) component of preservice teachers' education, namely feedback. 3 Feedback during WIL is considered to be a risky, uncertain and inconsistent endeavour. 4 Student teachers express dissatisfaction and frustration about the timeliness of the feedback, the inability to act on the feedback, the lack of explanation of the use of rubrics and sometimes the incomprehensibility.…”