Applying peer rubric feedback in foreign language teacher education. Fostering pre-service teachers’ oral feedback skills through facilitating reflective moments

The relevance of effective feedback and its striking influence on student success has received ample attention in academic teacher training, not least since the publication of Hattie & Timperley’s extensive meta study and proposed feedback model (2007). Indeed, feedback is deemed one of the most influential factors that shapes student achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). However, for feedback to be effective, it needs to be understood and acted upon by the learner (Helmke, 2007). It is therefore imperative that foreign language teachers have the ability to convey their feedback in an accessible manner while adhering to best practice feedback principles. Providing accessible feedback requires language skills and practical skills which are considered highly specific to the teaching profession (Bleichenbacher et al., 2014c) and which are not simply acquired through mere exposure. Indeed, they need to deliberately be developed through the application of reflective tools, practice and specific tasks in foreign language teaching education. The study presented in this paper empirically investigates the systematic implementation of targeted feedback training in foreign language teaching education through the employment of an assessment rubric as a reflective tool. The rubric is based on the profession-related language competence profiles (Kuster et al., 2014) and is specifically designed to assess profession-related language competences such as providing feedback at target level. More specifically, this study researches the development of pre-service foreign language teachers’ oral feedback skills in the target language English while particularly focusing on language- and content related aspects. The author discusses the rationale, design and implementation of the study with emphasis on the complex learning environment as its setting, the application of the language competence profiles and assessment rubric as reflective tools and first results that indicate the rubric feedback method’s potential to increase pre-service teachers’ awareness of relevant, language specific markers of effective feedback.