Real-Time Visual Feedback Boosts Teacher Candidates’ Use of Open-Ended Questions

Written by: Anne Fennimore, Ph.D.

In the ongoing effort to enhance teacher preparation, Kelly B. Kearney, Ed.D., BCBA-D, assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at Florida Atlantic University, along with Kalynn Hall, Ed.D., associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Leadership & Counseling at Columbus State University, offer new insight into how real-time visual feedback can shape the instructional practices of teacher candidates.

Their research, published in the Journal of Education for Teaching, investigates whether immediate, data-driven feedback can encourage novice educators to employ more open-ended questions—a key strategy for fostering student engagement and higher-order thinking.

The study followed three teacher candidates enrolled in special education certification programs as they conducted lessons in public elementary school classrooms. Although each participant had previously received instruction on questioning techniques as part of their coursework, none were observed specifically for this skill.

During the intervention, a faculty observer—seated discreetly behind the students—recorded each instance of an open-ended question. This data were instantly translated into a line graph and displayed on a screen visible to the teacher candidate, providing immediate visual feedback on their questioning patterns.

The results were striking. Before the intervention, open-ended questions comprised just 24% to 29% of the candidates’ classroom inquiries. With real-time feedback, those numbers sharply increased, with one candidate’s usage rising from 26% to 83% in a single session.

Even after the visual feedback was removed, the improvement persisted, with follow-up observations revealing that the teacher candidates continued to utilize open-ended questions at significantly higher rates, ranging from 72% to 88%.

“What’s exciting is how quickly and consistently these teacher candidates adapted their instructional behavior,” said Dr. Kearney. “The visual feedback gave them a clear, immediate picture of their teaching in action, empowering them to make meaningful changes that stuck.”

The findings underscore the potential of real-time visual feedback as a practical tool for teacher preparation programs. Rather than relying solely on post-lesson evaluations or generalized feedback, the immediate presentation of data enable teachers to reflect on and adjust their instructional behaviors in the moment. Hall and Kearney suggest that such interventions may be more effective than traditional methods in promoting lasting changes in questioning techniques, which are critical for encouraging student discourse and analytical thinking.

While the study’s scope was limited by a small sample size and logistical constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, results from this initial study were significant. The authors recommend further research to determine whether these changes in teacher behavior translate into improved student outcomes and to explore the scalability of real-time feedback interventions across various educational settings.