Who's in control?: Finding balance in student-teacher interactions

Abstract

In higher education students have many interactions with their teacher in which teachers provide support for students’ learning. Feedback conversations in higher education are specific examples of student-teacher interactions and are the objects of this research project. Feedback conversations can help students to acquire the essential skills for the task they are working on. In five empirical studies, we aimed to unravel the complexity of face-to-face feedback conversations between teachers and students in higher education. We explored how these student-teacher interactions take place, why they interact the way they do, and we stimulated teachers to interact differently. Five studies were conducted, with which we not only wanted to contribute to the literature on student-teacher interactions, but also aimed to improve educational practice. In the study described in chapter 2 of this dissertation, we investigated the impact of verbal feedback and feedback request forms on students’ feedback perception, self-efficacy, and motivation. Supervisors’ diagnostic behaviour during feedback conversations was explored in the study presented in chapter 3. Students’ and supervisors’ co-regulation was investigated in the study discussed in chapter 4. In the study described in chapter 5, we developed a better understanding of supervisors’ diagnostic behaviour by exploring their in-the-moment decisions and perceptions of their students. Finally, the effects of a lesson study project on supervisors’ pedagogical content knowledge was investigated in the study described in chapter 6. In many of the feedback conversations we have observed, student-teacher interactions were characterized by a teacher-centred approach with a lot of teacher interventions and direct regulation towards students’ learning. From a scaffolding perspective, this seems to be an acceptable teaching strategy when students are starting with a new task. Several teachers did not decrease their regulation in a phase that students’ independent functioning was expected. Although it remained unclear in our studies if teachers were unable to decrease their support, our research did show that teachers can learn to apply effective scaffolding techniques to enhance the active role of the students during feedback conversations. Our lesson study approach has been shown to be an effective method to enrich teachers’ PCK of instructional strategies. We showed that teachers are able to apply indirect regulation strategies, such as asking questions and prompting, to stimulate students to think for themselves. The significance of this project lies in the empirical evidence it provides about how teachers can strengthen the role of students; how teachers can stimulate students to take on responsibility for their own learning process. We hope that the studies presented in this dissertation will inspire teachers, as well as researchers, to find the balance in student-teacher interactions, and conclude as we did: both students and teachers should be in control.