Contribution of supervisors’ feedback to student teachers learning during teaching practice at morogoro and vikindu teachers’ college, Tanzania

The study investigated on the extent to which supervisors‟ feedback contributes to student teachers learning during teaching practice in Public Teacher Training Colleges. The objectives of the study were; to assess the types and relevance of feedback supervisors give student teachers; find out views of student teachers on the contribution of supervisors feedback during teaching practice in relation to teacher preparation programs; examine the timing of provision of feedback during teaching practice. Finally, the study explored how teaching practice helps student teachers improve their teacher preparation and the reasons for non-provision of feedback to student teachers. The study was conducted at Morogoro and Vikindu Teacher colleges. It employed qualitative research approach. A case study design was employed. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to obtain 50 student teachers and 10 tutors from the two colleges. The instruments of data collection were documentary review, interviews as well as focus group discussion. Content analysis method was used to analyse data thematically. The findings revealed that many tutors and student teachers were aware of the feedback types provided during teaching practice. The types of feedback provided were either written or oral. The study revealed further that majority of tutors and student teachers agreed that the feedbacks provided during teaching practice positively contributed to make them learn as it helped them to discover the areas of mistakes, hence led to making improvements. Moreover, inadequate funds, inadequate time as well as incompetence of some of the tutors were among the challenges that hindered tutors to provide feedback to student teachers during teaching practice. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training should allocate enough funds to facilitate teaching practice in order to avoid non provision of feedback to student teachers during teaching practice. It is also recommended that tutors in teacher colleges should be provided with proper training by the Ministry of Education and Vocation Training so as to acquire proper knowledge and skills on how to conduct teaching practice supervision and feedback provision to student teachers.