Constructivist Feedback Practices: A Comparative Study of Chemistry Teaching in Cambodian General Public and New Generation Schools

Abstract

Considering chemistry teaching from a constructivist perspective, students learn abstract and complex concepts through the mutual construction between teacher and student dialogue, including teacher feedback. The teachers’ feedback to students during the question-answer exchange greatly influences students’ knowledge construction. New Generation Schools (NGS) was initiated in Cambodia in 2016 by mandating constructivist learning in education reform. In that process, this comparative study measured the different changes in the performance of Chemistry teachers’ feedback between General Public Schools (GPS) and NGS. Six chemistry teachers from GPS and three from NGS volunteered to audio-tap and videotape their lessons. Verbal transcriptions of teachers’ questions and statements were analyzed interpretively using the framework by Chin (2006) as an analytical lens. The commonality was that both groups provided neutral feedback on students’ correct answers. Thus, NGS teachers challenged students to provide the reason for those correct answers. The difference was that GPS teachers typically used directed feedback, whereas NGS teachers facilitated feedback by responding to students’ insufficient answers. Various forms of feedback in this study could serve as a practical framework, supplementing Chin's model and being utilized in professional development courses in Cambodia or elsewhere. The implication was that teachers armed with this practical feedback framework could confidently enhance their feedback strategies within the constructivist learning approach.