Examining Corrective Feedback Narratives of Teachers: Implications and Aspirations (Poster 6)

• In Event: University-Community Engagement as a Strategy for Dismantling Racial Injustice and Co-Constructing Educational Possibilities

Abstract

Corrective feedback is a highly debated topic within educational research. Some scholars
claim that corrective feedback provides the necessary critique needed for language development
and skill mastery; while other scholars claim that corrective feedback has a negative stance that
leaves students feeling poorly or not qualified (Ellis, 2009). In regards to English learner (EL) instructional methodologies and language ideologies, corrective feedback becomes even more heavily debated. Here, a vast majority of scholars believe that corrective feedback and repairs are an absolute must to ensure EL students can develop a writing, literacy, and language style that is
cohesive to Standard American English (Bitchener, 2008). On the other hand, there is belief that
corrective feedback and repair can be detrimental to EL students as it makes them feel
continually ostracized in a general education classroom. This can lead to negative feelings and
even resistance to acquiring a second language (Truscott, 2007).

NARATE (Narrative Analysis of Repair and Teacher English Learner Expertise) is a research project that explores corrective feedback and repair given to multilingual learners. More importantly, this empirical work is borne out of years of a teacher professional development project with an explicit university -community-school partnership with the goal of building culturally sustaining practices by integrating STEM and community knowledge (Author, 2022). Further, our goal was to disrupt inequities in STEM and EL education through our embedded and sustained partnership. In this presentation, we focus on narrative analysis, language ideologies, and sociocultural views of learning (Author, 2013), this narrative lens allows for a robust level of comparison as new teachers, veteran teachers, and those working to gain their EL or bilingual endorsements share their stories of how reductive views of language can have negative longitudinal impact on learners. Through the deconstruction of language ideologies and development of relational solidarity, educators share how they can use corrective feedback to build optimal educational opportunities and break down racial injustices in public education.

Our data corpus consisted of 50 repair-narratives collected from 50 teachers who taught in classrooms with majority ELs. 37 of our teachers were situated in an urban context and participated in a two-year Master's action research professional development program. Our analysis suggests that most educators in the study relate their corrective feedback and repair choices in their classroom to experiences they had before beginning their teaching careers. A vast majority of educators in the study experienced racial inequality and/or injustice, in the form of corrective feedback mediated by deficit views of non-standard linguistic practices, as a child and teen causing them to develop an approach to corrective feedback and repair that allows for student individual identity and culture to flourish. Furthermore, they developed a more robust metalinguistic consciousness in their own pedagogy (Martinez, 2016). Overall, teachers use their past to transcend the barriers of race and culture in order to engage in discourse practices that engender critical thinking and inquiry grounded in linguistic solidarity.

Authors

• Aria Razfar, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Rebecca Ziegler Rupnick, University of Illinois at Chicago