Discrepancies in Teachers’ Perceptions and Reported Practices: The Case of Written Feedback in an EFL Context

Abstract As Ferris (2014) states, teachers have received insufficient research attention regarding their perceptions and practices of feedback. This study, therefore, was an attempt to qualitatively explore Iranian EFL teachers’ feedback-related perceptions and practices. In addition, the discrepancies between the reported perceptions and practices were examined. The data collection consisted of qualitative interviews with 14 teachers. The data analysis (i. e., data coding using the grounded theory approach) helped develop a coding scheme in which a number of thematic categories and subcategories were delineated with regard to feedback. The findings, accordingly, revealed some noteworthy discrepancies between the teachers’ perceptions and practices. For instance, although the teachers valued peer-feedback and selective correction, they reported providing teacher-generated feedback and comprehensive commentary on grammatical errors, respectively. Also, the teachers were aware of the importance of indirect methods of correction (e. g., to promote learner autonomy), but mostly gave explicit feedback on their students’ grammatical issues. Overall, we showed that these discrepancies primarily resulted from students’ expectations. We also discussed the findings in light of sociocultural considerations and the tenets of learner engagement with feedback.