ABSTRACT
Although ostensibly contravening the refl ective and developmental objectives of TP, it can also be argued that assessment, especially if mitigated during feedback, provides a barometer by which growth and progression can be usefully measured. In any case, formal assessment is often demanded by internal institutional regulations and more imperatively by external regulation bodies. It is also highly valued in the market place where employers have often in the past, at a time when only a pass or fail grade was awarded, contacted the course director and tutors for a more detailed assessment and grade type evaluation. And, of course, it is expected by the teachers, who need it to assess their development and gain a realistic picture of how they are performing (Zanting, Verloop, and Vermunt 2001). Consequently, in my institution, a decision was taken in the past that student teachers were to be awarded a letter grade on each individual lesson for which they are supervised in line with the relevant percentage equivalent scales. The mean of these grades is calculated for the semester, and combined with a percentage out of 20 for the teaching practice diaries to get an overall result for the module. Therefore, both summative and formative assessment is part of each feedback process, although as a general observation, the spoken feedback is much more formative while the written reports contain marks for each sub-section and an overall grade given in the header of the form, and veer towards a relatively summative style. None of the POTTI data provides an example of fi nal grades being considered, as tutors usually adjudicate these after the oral interactions so that account can be taken of the refl ective and participatory skills of the STs, as well as any unanticipated issues which are born during the feedback discussions. Essentially then, in the corpora we see both praise and, usually constructive, criticism. In general, the student teachers accept the praise and concur, and they defer to the criticism and do not challenge it in any serious way. They are true to the sentiments they express in the questionnaires where they identify criticism as a necessary component of the process in order to help them develop and hone their teaching abilities.
