Teachers’ perceptions and implementation of formative feedback during the early phases of the design process

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how technology teachers perceive and implement formative feedback during the Early Phases of the Design Process (EPoDP) in technology classrooms. Formative feedback is essential to support and facilitate technology learners’ activities during design problem solving as learners often have difficulty exploring the design problem and generating novel solutions. However, the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for technology stipulates that teachers should provide learners with the opportunity to identify and solve design problems. However, there are limited pedagogical guidelines available to guide technology teachers on implementing effective feedback strategies to support such problem solving. Without guidance on how to implement formative feedback, technology teachers assess the learners’ design outcomes summatively and only provide formative feedback on teamwork and managerial aspects of the design process. It is important to understand how teachers perceive and implement formative feedback during design problem-solving activities. Without effective formative feedback, learners may have difficulty in successfully exploring design problems and generating novel solutions. This means that learners often explore known problems and generate obvious or existing solutions to problems. The conceptual framework used in this study was based on three existing frameworks, namely: Eris’ design inquiry-driven model; Hattie and Timperley’s conceptualised levels of formative feedback; and Goel and Pirolli’s description of the early design phases. This study utilised a qualitative approach within the interpretivist paradigm, and followed a descriptive case study design. A combination of convenience and purposive sampling methods was used to select senior phase technology teachers as participants. The data were collected through 11 semi-structured interviews and five non-participant technology classroom observations. An inductive thematic analysis of the interview data revealed three themes concerning technology teachers’ perceptions of formative feedback. These themes revealed that senior phase technology teachers view formative feedback through giving compliments and criticism, dialogic questioning, providing examples of existing products, and an intuitive process. Although technology teachers view formative v feedback as necessary, time limitations for completing design tasks and working through formative feedback result in lower feedback rates. A deductive analysis of the observational data showed that technology teachers’ formative feedback consists of a range of low-level questions and comments, Deep Reasoning Questions (DRQs), and Generative Design Questions (GDQs). Formative feedback questions and comments were observed at the task level, process level, self-regulative level, and self-level during the EPoDP. The findings of this study were used to develop a framework for investigating and supporting teacher’s formative feedback practices in technology classrooms. Recommendations for future research include a study to develop and explore the feasibility of a tool for planning and implementing formative feedback in the technology classroom. Additional research is also required to explore and describe the effect that formative feedback in the EPoDP has on learners’ design outcomes in senior phase technology classrooms. Keywords: Deep Reasoning Questions, early phases of design, formative feedback, Generative Design Questions, process-level feedback, self-regulative feedback, self-level feedback, technology teachers, task-level feedback