Feedback and Assessment in the New Kindergarten Teacher Education in Norway

Abstract

This paper investigates the feedback and assessment routines that are being established in the subject of pedagogy in the new model of Kindergarten Teacher Education (Barnehagelaererutdanning -BLU) in Norway. This scope is chosen due to the particular role of the subject of pedagogy in strengthening the understanding of the practice field, and in ensuring a coherent, professionally oriented perspective. The data comprise group interviews with three pedagogy teachers, two pedagogues from in-service kindergartens and one interview with one student. The gathered data were analysed according to guidelines for qualitative content analysis [1], and interpreted in the light of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Results show that pedagogues both at BLU and in-service kindergartens experience many challenges connected to formative assessment and feedback practice: (a) a tacit, private and low-priority assessment culture; (b) current practice characterized by summative assessment methods; and (c) minimal collaboration between involved participants. In conclusion, the paper suggests the following improvements in the area of feedback and assessment in the new BLU: (a) establishing a closer and more reciprocal collaboration between all participants; (b) encouraging a shared understanding of central goals and methods in formative assessment, and (c) increasing the status of assessment work and ensuring time resources to involved teachers.

Feedback Strategies Which Social Sciences Teachers Give to Their Students

“…This finding shows that teachers use feedback, correction and clues which are among the feedback strategies efficiently. It may indicate that feedback and correction which are feedback strategies take place as an active learning instrument in learning and teaching process [17,24,25].…”

“…Can (2005) studied the role of clues and reinforcers in teaching and learning [15], Çetinkaya and Köğce (2014), studied the feedbacks which Turkish and Mathematics teachers give to students [22], and Akalın (2014), studied teachers' professional development with performance feedback [23]. When the studies that were carried out before in the literature were regarded [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][21][22][23][24][25][26], it was established that there are studies about feedback strategies in different fields [27,28,29,30]. However, based on the reached resources it was determined that there is not any study about feedback strategies in social sciences field.…”

Pedagogy and interdisciplinarity: Research on the reformed kindergarten teacher education (KTE) in Norway

“…The data material revealed several issues; however, in this article, we will specifically address the challenges of how pedagogy as a subject is experienced in relation to the AK following the first phase of the implementation of the reform. There has been a great deal of international research on reforms in HEI in general; however, in terms of kindergarten teacher education (KTE), to the best of our knowledge (in searching databases such as Oria and Eric), only one study has been carried out on KTE in Norway, which investigated feedback and assessment on the subject of pedagogy (Haukenes, 2017). We obtained no hits on the educator's experience of pedagogy in KTE.…”