Affiliation and negative assessments in peer observation feedback for foreign language teachers professional development

Abstract

Abstract The growing use of peer observation in teacher professional development has created an interest in understanding how it is carried out and what the benefits are. Post-observation feedback is a crucial component of peer observation practices. This study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of peer observation feedback in foreign language teacher’s professional development. Adopting a conversation analysis perspective, we aim to establish how the interactional infrastructure is developed between observers and observees after a negative assessment during peer observation feedback. The results show that, when the observer is assessing a specific teaching action negatively and the observee expresses alignment with the observer’s position, the observer adopts an affiliative stance through the use of his/her epistemic expertise in two ways: either putting his/her self in the shoes of the observee or, in other cases, expressing the affiliative stance by appealing to the epistemic community to which they both belong.