Developing skills of giving and receiving feedbacks between students and their teachers: a case of mathematics students in Jimma University

One of the strategies to improve quality of teaching and learning at training institutes could be by developing the skill of giving and receiving feedbacks among the individuals involved in the training. This action research is then done as a final work for HDP in Jimma University (JU) to develop the skill of mutual understanding for improvement targeting third year mathematics student teachers and their mathematics teachers. Data were collected using questionnaire for all students and two focused group discussions among purposively selected few informants; one from students and the other from teachers. Based on the above two methods data were analyzed quantitative and qualitatively. As indicated in the result, the system of giving and receiving feed backs to improve the quality of teaching and learning activities was accepted as a very good approach both by students and teachers. Teachers agreed on what they have to improve in front of their students and this was appreciated by the students. Besides, some other controversial points were resolved by mutual agreement after discussion. Accordingly, students not only comment on the weak sides of their teachers, but also learnt to accept their weakness which were bottle necks for learning activities. Based on the findings it was recommended that such activity to continue not only in mathematics but also in all other subject areas in the future consistently.