In the realm of teacher education, feedback has long been acknowledged as a pivotal component shaping the development of aspiring educators. Yet, the precise mechanisms by which feedback operates within practice remain surprisingly underinvestigated. Traditionally, research in this field has gravitated toward exploring the delivery and content of lessons by teachers themselves, leaving the nuanced dialogic exchanges that occur between teacher educators and student teachers—specifically through feedback—mostly unexplored. A recent innovative study, published in TESOL Quarterly, delves into this critical dimension, employing a meticulous conversation analytic framework to unravel how feedback practices in language teacher education transcend simple evaluation to become interactive, reflective, and co-constructed learning opportunities.
Dr. Eunseok Ro of Pusan National University in South Korea and Dr. Mika Ishino from Doshisha University in Japan spearheaded this pioneering inquiry. Their research harnesses the tools of conversation analysis (CA), a method that dissects the micro-interactions and multimodal cues within communication, to examine how feedback sessions unfold immediately following microteaching exercises within two university-based language teacher education programs. The core insight emerging from their analysis is the conceptualization of “reflect-ables”—specific, microteaching moments selectively drawn into reflective discussion through gestures, shared gaze, note-taking, and verbal co-construction.
Their empirical investigation involved 21 student teachers across Korean and Japanese institutional contexts, providing a comparative perspective enriched by cultural and disciplinary particularities. With 17 participants from the Korean university and 4 from the Japanese, the study set out to capture the immediate post-microteaching feedback sessions where teacher educators meticulously referenced concrete teaching moments. These moments, transformed into “reflect-ables,” act as focal points tethered to professional reflection and developmental discourse. This interactional process departs markedly from more static, one-dimensional approaches to feedback prevalent in many educational settings.
A striking aspect of the findings lies in the differing modalities of delivering positive versus negative feedback. Positive feedback surfaced as immediate and direct endorsements of effective teaching practices. For instance, teacher educators highlighted successful strategies such as prompting deeper student elaboration or deploying creative, interactive materials. This form of affirmation acts as a reinforcement of pedagogical competence and encourages replication of good practices. Conversely, negative feedback was more delicately rendered, often mitigated and framed as constructive suggestions rather than outright criticism. This tactfulness underscores a fundamental ethic positioning the student as the beneficiary of growth, rather than a subject of fault-finding.
Multimodality plays a crucial role in orienting participants to “reflect-ables.” Teacher educators employed a repertoire of semiotic resources, such as physical gestures indicating specific classroom behaviors, gaze coordination to maintain shared focus, and the strategic use of notes and projected slides that visually scaffold the feedback interaction. This multimodal orchestration supports a dynamic alignment between educators and student teachers, forging a “shared orientation” to the teaching moment under review and fostering mutual engagement in reflective dialogue. This approach underscores the richly embodied and context-sensitive nature of feedback, contrary to the perception of it as a simple transmission of evaluative comments.
By applying conversation analysis to these feedback interactions, the researchers extend existing understandings beyond the typical third-turn positions in classroom dialogues, illuminating how teacher educators systematically invoke retrospective reference to teaching events. This retrospective orientation enables educators to scaffold opportunities for reflection, embedding feedback within a temporally extended and collaborative pedagogical practice. Such a reconceptualization challenges traditional paradigms that treat feedback as an isolated outcome, spotlighting its ongoing construction as a situated, interactional phenomenon deeply shaped by institutional norms and goals.
The institutional specificity of these feedback practices emerges as another significant dimension in this study. Whereas conversation analysis-informed teacher education programs prioritize interactional competence and reflective dialogue, other professional education contexts—such as medical training or doctoral supervision—embody different instructional priorities and feedback modalities. This observation situates the findings within a broader landscape of professional education, inviting further inquiry into how feedback is molded by disciplinary cultures and institutional missions.
While the sample size and scope were restricted to two universities and a limited number of student teachers, the detailed empirical analysis offers rich insights into everyday pedagogical practices. The study effectively demonstrates how CA-trained teacher educators integrate methodological rigor with professional expertise to craft dynamic reflective spaces. For the larger researcher community, this work highlights the methodological promise of treating feedback as an interactional process, opening new avenues for investigating the microdynamics of teaching and learning.
For teacher educators themselves, this research illuminates concrete, actionable pathways to enhance their feedback practices. By employing retrospective references to salient classroom events combined with multimodal cues, educators can foster richer, more participatory reflection sessions that empower student teachers to critically engage with and refine their instructional skills. This framework encourages feedback not merely as judgment but as dialogic collaboration, fostering professional growth through collective meaning-making.
Dr. Mika Ishino reflects on the practical implications: “Teacher educators will appreciate the research findings to formulate their styles of feedback on their student-teachers.” This suggests that beyond theoretical enrichment, the study delivers valuable pedagogical tools that could be adapted and tailored across diverse educational contexts, potentially transforming how reflective teacher education is conceptualized and operationalized.
Ultimately, this research repositions feedback within teacher education as an interactive, multimodal performance that cultivates reflective expertise. The notion of “reflect-ables” as interactional constructs advances the conversation analytic literature, illustrating how microscopic pedagogical talk can serve far more complex and generative functions than mere evaluation. In doing so, it provides a critical foundation for optimizing teacher preparation, emphasizing the importance of interactional proficiency as integral to effective language teaching.
As educational landscapes grow increasingly complex, nurturing nuanced competencies such as reflection and interactional sensitivity will be pivotal. The insights generated by Drs. Ro and Ishino’s research not only prompt a rethink of feedback’s conceptual boundaries but also pave the way for innovative pedagogical interventions that resonate with the future of teacher education globally.
Subject of Research: People
Article Title: Creating “Reflect-Ables”: A Conversation Analytic Study of Feedback Practices in Language Teacher Education
News Publication Date: 13-Oct-2025
Web References:
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70035
Image Credits: Eunseok Ro from Pusan National University, South Korea, and Mika Ishino from Doshisha University, Japan
Keywords: Applied linguistics, Teacher training
