Issues in Applied Linguistics

We conducted a qualitative study with 14 Iranian EFL teachers to explore their perceptions about feedback and to investigate the factors that mediated their translation into feedback practices. As our analysis indicated, students’ expectations, teachers’ perceptions, institutional guidelines, and parents' expectations were important constituents of our teachers’ perceptions. Our analysis also suggested that our participants’ perceptions were comprised of a network of variables, and these variables were at times conflicting. For instance, while the teachers valued feedback on content and organization, their students preferred grammar-centered written feedback. These student expectations were also reported to affect English institutions’ guidelines regarding the provision of written feedback. However, our findings showed that students’ expectations were the dominant factors which ultimately determined the translation of our teachers’ perceptions to their feedback practices. Overall, the findings indicate that our teachers’ perceptions are rarely the basis for their practice, primarily because of dominant student perceptions.