Within initial teacher education across Europe, observation of trainee teachers’ classroom practice is common and serves a number of purposes: formative assessment and target setting for personal development; a vehicle to engender reflective practice, and summative assessment against professional standards. Observation practices usually entail some kind of feedback to trainees, either verbally or in writing. The paper suggests that the way in which the practice of observation-feedback is operationalised is problematic. It interrogates the purpose of the feedback in relation to the formation of the trainee as a teacher, and to her notions of what it means to teach. Experience of conducting, and shadowing, observations of trainee teachers suggests that the power relationships inherent in observation-feedback practices tend to produce a formulaic dialogue between observer and trainee. Such dialogic relationships can be characterised in terms used by Michel Foucault in a discussion of rhetoric and flattery as part of his consideration of the Greek notion of parrhēsia (Foucault 2001, 2005). The paper pursues the argument that, in giving feedback to trainees, teachers undertaking observations resort to a kind of rhetoric. The term ‘rhetoric’ is used here stipulatively to mean ‘the art of persuasion’. The observer appears constrained to a debased form of rhetoric where she is required to subscribe to and replicate certain discourses, and to persuade the trainee of the merit of these. Such discourses are those ingrained in national policy and priorities and in occupational standards and outcomes. In response, the trainee being observed resorts to a form of flattery, to an easy acquiescence with the words and ideas of the observer. It is as if the trainee teacher is pursuing what she sees unquestionably as the expected or correct response, or indeed is striving to earn some kind of respect or favour. Indeed, the commonly used observation, feedback and reflective practice model, rather than fulfilling its intended purpose of facilitating a meaningful discussion, leads to a kind of voicelessness. Both the observer and the trainee are silenced, though in different ways, from free and frank speaking, from parrhēsia: from giving account of what is exactly in one’s mind and from engaging in a discourse where truth is spoken. The paper concludes by offering an account of how parrhēsia could inform the practice of giving and receiving feedback in initial teacher education and what this would mean for the education of both the trainee and the observer.

The paper draws upon previous experiences of undertaking teaching practice observations, and uses these as a starting point for a more philosophical consideration of the issue of providing feedback to trainee teachers on their practice. The paper's philosophical stance is rooted in the writings of Michel Foucault on the Greek notion of parrhesia.

The paper challenges the usefulness of feedaback as it is commonly given to trainee teachers to support their personal and professional development as teachers. It argues that such feedback can be characterised as a debased form of rhetoric and that trainees' responses, far from being critically reflective, often amount to a form of flattery. This leads to a kind of voicelessness for both the trainee and the observer. The paper concludes by offering an account of how parrhēsia could inform the practice of giving and receiving feedback in initial teacher education and what this could mean for the ongoing education of both the trainee and the observer.