Pre-service science teachers’ opinions about using the feedback process in the preparation of teaching materials

The study data show that a majority of the pre-service teachers held positive opinions about the use of feedback in the preparation of teaching materials. Pre-service teachers’ positive opinions about this process include the recognition and correction of mistakes, eliminating the deficiencies, provision of meaningful and permanent learning, improvement of the communication between teachers and students, making pre-service teachers learn about their study area and gain professional experience, and enhance distinctive thinking, in other words, creativity. Some pre-service teachers also thought that feedback prevented teachers from conveying inaccurate information, and gave students a positive perspective on their teachers since it provided objective evaluation. The pre-service teachers also asserted that they would prefer to use this type of evaluation in their professional lives. Their reasons for making this decision were that it provides effective learning, enhances interest in and motivation for the course since the students see it as a second chance. They also felt that mistakes would be minimized by a process that includes students and improves communication between teachers and students. Although a majority of the pre-service teachers said that the feedback did not have any disadvantages, some participants said that this process was time-consuming and exhausting. The results of this study are supported by those of other relevant studies.

Demiraslan and Çevik (2014) determined that the students who gave and received feedback tended to have a positive perception of it. The students considered it to be beneficial, effective and productive. They said that they were able to recognize and correct their mistakes, eliminate deficiencies and learn new perspectives. Another study found that the students read and valued their teachers’ comments. It found that the students were internally motivated although they were aware that grades were important, and that they tried to learn from feedback that helped them to understand the subject comprehensively (Higgins, Hartley and Skelton, 2002). Burnett and Mandel (2010) studied praise and feedback in primary school classes and found that teachers mainly gave general praise to students without a specific purpose, while ability- or effort-related praise about accomplishing a task given to students would be more beneficial for them. In a study by Weaver (2006), students stated that feedback was valuable to them. However, they also said that feedback from their teachers did not contribute to their learning when it was too general and unclear, provided little guidance, focused on negative behavior and was not associated with evaluation criteria. Other studies’ results are consistent with those of this study. Attali and Powers (2008) found that feedback helped learners to identify their expectations of their own performance, determine their comprehension levels and become aware of their misconceptions. It also gives them clues about new perspectives on correcting their mistakes and improving their performance. According to Gibbs and Simpson (2003), feedback should be understandable for students and make them become more intellectual.

This study was conducted in the Instructional Technologies and Materials Design course, which is a compulsory course in all branches of teaching in education faculties and includes obligatory practice. In context of this course, the pre-service teachers, who were more active in cognitive and kinesthetic terms than they would be in a theoretical course, learned knowledge and skills. The suitability of these practices for the prerequisites of their tasks is the point that should be considered by pre-service teachers in their practical studies. In practical studies without feedback, the connection between theory and practice is not established successfully, which leads to faulty products or performances. Another risk for these studies is using the internet, which pre-service teachers prefer as a short cut when they do not receive sufficient feedback. Although the internet is seen as an important source of information and the communication network of our age, it also includes a lot of unreliable information sources. For this reason, feedback is an important type of evaluation that can eliminate inappropriate ways of learning and theoretical errors caused by the use of the internet. In addition, the pre-teachers’ positive opinions about the use of feedback in their professional life indicates the information about the generalizability of this process for formal education.

The study results suggest that:
Teacher training should involve formative evaluation, which includes effective feedback, in addition to summative evaluation. It should also be ensured that pre-service teachers personally experience feedback’s effectiveness. Like pre-service teachers, working teachers may also be offered in-service training programs to improve their feedback knowledge and skills and other types of formative evaluation.

Feedback can be used at all levels, from primary to higher education, and different forms of feedback can be used for different courses.

Information from feedback is important for both students and teachers. Educators can use this information to organize learning environments and activities.

Since feedback requires the use of information in performance-based activities, the number of tasks that are based on performance may be increased in learning environments. This will enhance the quality of learning.

This study’s participants were pre-service science teachers. Similar studies should be conducted with different samples or larger numbers of pre-service teachers, and other formative evaluation practices should be tested with different samples.