Pre-service teachers’ feedback on their peers’ lesson plans

Peer feedback provides apowerful tool for student learning; however, there are challenges associated with feedback. This paper draws on a feedback cycle to support 13 mathematics secondary preservice teachers (PTs) to provide feedback on their peers' lesson plans. PTs were randomly assigned to provide feedback on a lesson plan which had been co-created by a group of their peers. Each PT individually wrote a 500-word commentary to provide constructive feedback for the group and suggestions for improving their lesson. The emerging coding of the commentaries identified five main feedback foci: pedagogy and teaching approaches, tasks, learning intentions, structure and organisation, and catering for diversity. The a priori coding of the types of suggestions from PTs found that the feedback most often called for changes to the lesson plans by modifying existing elements or adding new components, with some suggestions for clarification or for more detail. These results suggest that collaborative lesson plans can provide a useful source material in peer feedback activities for PTs.