Analyzing Discourses in Teacher Observation Feedback Conferences

This volume focuses on the post-observation feedback conference, a common feature of teacher education programs, and highlights the importance of such talk in the development and evaluation of teachers and other professionals.

The book adopts a linguistic ethnographic approach, which provides a framework for examining the contextual nature of the talk and how it is embedded within wider social contexts and structures, such as evaluation regimes. Drawing on data from a range of settings, including pre-service teacher education, medical education, and teacher appraisal programs, Copland and Donaghue examine the feedback conference from a range of perspectives, including face, identity and genre, and show how a nuanced understanding of discussions can support teacher trainers, supervisors and observers to provide appropriate and useful feedback. A concluding chapter brings together brief vignettes from researchers active in the field to point to future directions for further study.

This book will be of particular interest to students and researchers in discourse analysis, language education, linguistic anthropology, and professional communication, as well as pre- and in-service teachers.

Fiona Copland is Professor of TESOL at the University of Stirling (UK), where she is also Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She has taught English and trained teachers in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and Nigeria. She has published in widely in language teacher education, teaching English to young learners (including the Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners) and linguistic ethnography.

Helen Donaghue is a senior lecturer in English language teacher education at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) in the Sheffield Institute of Education. She has taught English and educated teachers in the UK, Hungary and the United Arab Emirates. Her published work focuses on language teacher education and institutional interaction.