Feedback Configurations in Interpreting Teaching: Understanding Teachers’ Feedback Belief‐Practice Tensions

ABSTRACT Teachers’ beliefs are noted not to always align with their practices, and such mismatches may in fact reflect teachers’ situated responses to contextual demands. Existing studies have largely focused on corrective feedback in second language teaching and typically examined feedback dimensions in isolation, restraining understanding of how multiple dimensions co‐occur in authentic classroom interaction and relate to teachers’ belief‐practice tensions. Given the inherently multidimensional nature of interpreting teaching, this study examined nine undergraduate interpreting teachers’ feedback beliefs and practices. Drawing on classroom observations, semi‐structured interviews, correlation analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis, the study identified two major tensions concerning feedback explicitness (implicit vs. explicit) and recipients (individual vs. group). Three recurring feedback configurations emerged: performance‐oriented critical feedback, specific supportive feedback, and general praise‐oriented feedback. The first configuration appeared to address the explicitness tension, whereas the latter two were associated with the recipient tension. The study helps shift attention from individual feedback dimensions to recurrent feedback configurations as meaningful units of analysis. It also highlights belief‐practice tensions as enacted and managed through recurrent feedback configurations in situated instructional contexts.