“I like how you begin…” Compliment or feedback? TEs’ subjective positive assessments of student teachers’ microteaching

Providing feedback on student teachers’ (ST) microteaching is an essential practice for teacher educators (TE). While many researchers have focused on how TEs mitigate the tension involved in providing negative assessments, far fewer have examined how TEs undertake positive assessments in their feedback interaction. In this paper, we focus on a particular format of positive feedback, namely subjective positive assessment (e.g., “I like how you begin”), and illustrate its delicate nature and social functions within pedagogical discourse. The data are sourced from 22 post-microteaching feedback sessions in English language teacher education programs in Korea and Japan. Analyses of 40 instances of TEs’ subjective positive assessments reveal two types of accounting orientations, namely a) grounding a TE’s first-hand observation, and b) grounding a ‘general teaching principle.’ In the former type, the subjective assessments are grounded in the ST’s first-hand experience of the ST’s microteaching (e.g., "when you showed us X.."), as the TEs attended the ST’s microteaching as an audience. In the latter, subjective assessments are grounded in general teaching principles. In both types, the STs show their understanding of the TEs’ subjective assessment as institutional ‘feedback.’ By comparing with deviant cases, we argue that positive feedback is delivered through the careful design and sequential positioning of subjective assessments. Our findings underscore the delicate nature of positive feedback and its significant role in shaping the pedagogical discourse in teacher education.