Abstract:

The need to develop skills for providing constructive feedback is essential for university students’ who are about to begin their practice at schools. They need to know what to assess during classroom observations, how to provide the required feedback to their fellow students and the appropriate moment to provide it. They need a framework to follow so as to be efficient both as observers and as feedback providers. This skill will be necessary not only during their practice but also when they start work and need to comment on their colleagues’ performance or their students’ behavior and learning.
This study is part of a larger study devoted to developing a rubric for assessing teachers’ competencies as they are defined in the Bulgarian law for pre-school and school education. The main participants in this process were 62 university students studying primary-school education that were to begin their practice at schools in the 2017/18 academic year. Another group of important participants were a group of 32 primary-school teachers who were initially observed and later participated in the development of the classroom observation rubric. First, students were acquainted with all the competencies teachers have to possess as they are defined in the Bulgarian standard for teachers’ competencies. Later on, they had to define which of these competencies are observable in the course of a lesson and they were engaged in discussions about how the presence or the absence of these competencies looks like in the classroom. After defining the key competencies, around which the observation rubric was to be developed, they were presented with the rubric as a tool for assessment. Students had the opportunity to work with many university instructors and school leaders and were engaged in several seminars, discussions and interviews which helped them produce an observation rubric with which to analyze the quality of teachers’ performance as well as to reflect on their own.
The second task was to research what type of a feedback students usually provide before being instructed how to do that. After a long period of recording, transcribing their messages and analyzing them several characteristics of the content and tone of the feedback were identified. After acquainting and training students with different techniques for giving feedback several steps were designed that would ensure an informative, timely and friendly type of a feedback.
The qualitative research methods that were used were participant observations, in-depth interviews and focus groups.
Learning how to give constructive feedback effectively will furthermore help university students to provide guidance and address tensions in the workplace and in the classroom.

Keywords:

classroom observation, criteria, feedback, rubric, university students