Applying Peer Rubric Feedback in Foreign Language Teacher Education: Fostering Pre-service Teachers’ Oral Feedback Skills Through Facilitating Reflective Moments

Effective feedback practice has received ample attention and has been deemed one of the most influential factors that shape student achievement. Socio-constructivist conceptualizations of feedback highlight that the meaning of feedback needs to be co-constructed in dialogue and understood and acted upon by the learner. In the foreign language classroom, engaging in effective feedback conversations thus requires language teachers to acquire language skills and competencies such as teacher feedback literacy, which are considered highly specific to the teaching profession. Such competencies are not simply acquired through mere exposure. Instead, they need to deliberately be developed, for instance through the application of reflective tools, practice, and specific tasks. This paper presents a quasi-experimental intervention study that empirically investigates the implementation of a profession-related assessment rubric and its potential effects on the development of 48 pre-service language teachers’ oral feedback skills in the target language English while focusing on language- and content related aspects of their feedback performances. The paper presents the rationale, design, and implementation of the intervention study with a focus on the application of the assessment rubric as a reflective tool. Results suggest that, while rubric peer feedback may contribute to raising awareness of teacher language competence requirements and teacher feedback literacy, stronger interventions are necessary to foster actual competence development in this area.