The Effect of Teacher’s Self-Education on Feedback Provision in Elementary School Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of self-education of physical educators as concerns the provision of feedback to primary school students. Twenty educators with teaching experience of more than three years were randomly selected to participate in the study. Ten of them formed the control group, whereas the rest of them formed the experimental group. Four lessons of each educator were videotaped: two before the intervention and two after its completion. After the first two lessons, each educator in the experimental group received an information leaflet on effective feedback, along with the audio visual tape of his first lessons, in order to understand the feedback aspects that could be possibly improved. Feedback provision was assessed with a tool which combined a) the Feedback Observation Instrument (FOI) of Silverman, Τyson, and Krampitz (1992), and b) the Αugmented Feedback Observation System (AFOS; Tan, 1996). One-way ANOVA indicated no significant differences between the two groups in the initial measurement. Then, multivariate analysis of variance with repeated measures was applied. Results showed significant differences between the two groups in the content, the purpose, the kind, the focus, and the quality of the feedback, in favor of the experimental group. However, as far as the type, time, direction, and congruence of feedback are concerned, no significant differences were observed between the two groups. It can be concluded that self education even of short duration helped physical educators improve the way they provide feedback to elementary schoolchildren.