Conversation analysis reveals how teacher educators shape reflection through feedback

Feedback is one of the most important aspects of teacher education, but how exactly it works in practice remains underexplored. Most studies focus on how teachers deliver lessons, while little attention has been paid to how teacher educators provide feedback and how that feedback can shape reflection and professional growth.

Published in TESOL Quarterly, a new study by Dr. Eunseok Ro (Pusan National University, South Korea) and Dr. Mika Ishino (Doshisha University, Japan) addresses this gap. Drawing on conversation analysis (CA), the researchers examined post-microteaching feedback sessions in two language teacher education programs to show how feedback can be constructed interactionally. “As a former high school teacher and a teacher educator, I’m always interested in teacher education and CA on their interaction in classrooms,” said Dr. Ishino.

The study analyzed 21 student teachers across two contexts: a Korean university with 17 participants and a Japanese university with four. Microteaching sessions were recorded and followed by feedback discussions in which teacher educators referenced specific teaching events. The researchers identified a recurring practice: educators transformed particular classroom moments into “reflect-ables”—interactional events singled out for review and professional interpretation. Positive feedback was often immediate and direct, highlighting successful practices, such as elaborating on students’ answers or designing interactive materials. Negative feedback, in contrast, was typically delivered with mitigation, framed as suggestions for improvement, and grounded in the idea that students (rather than teachers) were the primary beneficiaries of the change.

Both types of feedback relied heavily on notes, slides, and gestures to anchor retrospective references. “Not only for real-life application but also for teacher education practice, the teacher educators will especially appreciate the research findings to formulate their styles of feedback on their student-teachers,” explained Dr. Ishino.

By applying multimodal CA, the authors were able to show how feedback is not simply evaluative but interactional: it involves gaze, gesture, note-taking, and embodied responses such as nodding or writing. These micro-practices helped establish a “shared orientation” between educator and student teacher toward the teaching moment under discussion. In doing so, feedback became a collaborative process in which reflection was co-constructed. This focus on “reflect-ables” contributes to CA literature by extending the analysis of feedback beyond the third-turn position in classroom interaction. Instead, it highlights how teacher educators draw on retrospective orientation to structure opportunities for reflection. The findings also underline the institutional specificity of feedback practices: while CA-informed teacher education prioritizes interactional competence, other contexts, such as medical education or Ph.D. supervision, emphasize different goals.

The authors acknowledge that the scope of this study was limited to two institutions and a small sample size. They have provided a detailed analysis and empirical evidence of how CA-trained teacher educators can integrate professional expertise into everyday pedagogical practice. For researchers, it demonstrates the value of examining feedback as an interactional process rather than a simple transmission of evaluation. For teacher educators, the study suggests that careful use of retrospective reference and multimodal resources can make feedback more effective in fostering reflection.

“Teacher educators will appreciate the research findings to formulate their styles of feedback,” Dr. Ishino said, noting that the study highlights concrete ways to structure feedback as a tool for professional growth. The authors argue that this work opens a space for rethinking how teacher education research conceptualizes feedback. Instead of being treated as an outcome, feedback should be analyzed as a practice: moment-by-moment, situated, and deeply tied to institutional goals. CA provides the tools to capture this process and to make visible how teacher educators create reflective opportunities through interaction. By showing how feedback can be transformed into “reflect-ables,” this study advances both CA research and teacher education practice. It illustrates how pedagogical talk in feedback sessions functions not just to evaluate but to cultivate reflection, helping future teachers refine their classroom interactional competence—a critical foundation for effective language teaching.
 

About Dr. Eunseok Ro
Dr. Eunseok Ro is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of English Education at Pusan National University, South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His research primarily focuses on the analysis of interactions in L2 education settings, using conversation analysis as his research methodology. His work has been published in Language Teaching Research, Computer Assisted Language Learning, and Linguistics and Education.

About Dr. Mika Ishino
Dr. Mika Ishino is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies at Doshisha University, Japan. She obtained her PhD in Language and Culture from Osaka University. Before obtaining her Ph.D., she was trained as a visiting researcher and conversation analyst at the Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include the application of conversation analysis in the education of foreign language teachers. Her work has been published in the Journal of Pragmatics, Classroom Discourse, and System.

Funding information
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Media contact:
Organization for Research Initiatives & Development
Doshisha University
Kyotanabe, Kyoto 610-0394, JAPAN
E-mail: jt-ura@mail.doshisha.ac.jp