Reflections on Post-Conference Feedback as a Developmental Teacher Training Strategy: Teaching Practice Supervisors’ Experiences in an ODL Institution

Nationally and internationally, higher education institutions offer teaching practice as one of the teacher training support strategies to develop pre-service teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and skills. The University of South Africa is one of the higher education institutions that offer open and distance learning and has a high number of pre-service teachers. The University’s teaching practice is supervised by experts and culminates in a conferencing session in which the supervisor provides feedback on various aspects of the teaching practice. This study explored the teaching practice supervisors’ reflections on post-conference feedback as a developmental approach towards reinforcing assessment for learning. The qualitative approach was used as the researchers interpreted these supervisors’ reflections on post-conference feedback as a developmental approach. Through purposive sampling, supervisors who had supervised pre-service teachers for three or more years were selected. The findings of this study showed that post-conference feedback was developmental to pre-service teachers and supervisors. The findings further illuminated the way in which supervisors had assessed pre-service teachers’ teaching skills to understand their strengths and weaknesses. In addition, the study identified pitfalls such as time and the supervisor-to-pre-service-teacher ratio as 1:10 per week, which was unsustainable. The study suggests that there is a need to set clear and specific outcomes for assessment, to provide a self-assessment rubric for pre-service teachers to avoid conflicts during the post-conference feedback, and to arrange professional development workshops to be conducted with the supervisors.