An investigation of feedback styles of classroom teachers who have low and high professional self-efficacy perceptions

Abstract

This study aims to make a comparative analysis of the feedback styles of classroom teachers who have low and high professional self-efficacy perceptions. The participants of the study are eight classroom teachers who work in state primary schools located in the city centre of Hatay. Descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the data collected through unstructured observations and semi-structured interviews. Schimmel's (1988) feedback classification was utilized in these analyses. Analysis of the data indicates very parallel findings in the observations and interviews. Both observations and interviews revealed that teachers in both groups generally used all feedback types; the type they used least frequently was exploratory feedback and then corrective and confirmation feedback stand in line respectively; confirmation feedback was found to be the most preferred feedback type by the teachers.  On the other hand, the teachers whose professional self-efficacy perceptions were high used all the feedback types much more frequently than the teachers with low professional self-efficacy perceptions. An analysis of the observations showed that exploratory feedback, which has more positive effects on students' learning than the other feedback types, is the least frequently used feedback type among teachers with high professional competence perception as well.