Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of Peer and Instructor Feedback Through Video Annotations: Whose Advice Do They Prefer?

Feedback literacy, defined as the ability to reflect on and implement constructive insights provided by others, is crucial for teachers’ professional growth. This study explores how Teacher Candidates (TCs) (n = 160) in an online reading methods course valued feedback on their teaching videos from peers versus instructors, leveraging communities of practice as the theoretical framework. This study examines TCs’ preferences and rationales for feedback sources in design/development research, a unique contribution to feedback research in teacher education. Using a concurrent mixed-methods approach, we analyzed TCs’ ratings of the quality of tagged comments on videos of their classroom instruction provided by both groups, and we analyzed the reasons they provided for their ratings. Results of the independent samples t-test revealed that the TCs rated instructor feedback significantly higher than peer feedback. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data identified factors such as feedback specificity, constructive criticism, timeliness, expertise, emotional support, and practical application as central to TCs’ feedback preferences. However, TCs also recognized aspects of peer feedback they found valuable, underscoring the potential benefit of structured feedback training to improve peer feedback effectiveness. These findings highlight the need for targeted feedback literacy development to help TCs maximize the benefits of both instructor and peer feedback.