Investigating Teachers’ Perceptions on Written Feedback Practices in Malaysian Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study is to investigate teachers’ perceptions and practices  about  teacher-written feedback in a secondary school in Malaysia.  There are empirical studies conducted on the effective teacher-written feedback practices to the students’ writing performance..  However, there is a little study was conducted in Malaysia on teachers’ perceptions regarding the role of teacher-written feedback in writing. Teachers’ perceptions and practices on written feedback is important to  determine how teacher-written feedback place in their formative assessment.  The results suggest that written feedback is commonly practiced in writing classroom and the teacher’s perceptions influenced to teacher-written feedback practices.  It was found that most teachers consider written feedback is ineffective practices to help students to improve their writing.  Teachers recognised that because of time constraints and students attitude influence the effectiveness of the written feedback to the learning process.  Several factors were found to have a great influence on the amount and quality of written feedback. The most significant factor was trainings to influence teachers’ perception indicating that teacher-written feedback is unimportant in which was influenced teachers’ practices in the classrooms.