I believe
that there is a place for peer feedback
in language learning as argued in my response to Henry's question in week 10.
However, the issue of students' lack of assessment skills to be able to
confidently implement this approach (Huang 2012:20) prevails in most contexts.
I feel strongly about this because my experience as an assessor under various
schemes reminds me of how difficult it was initially and hoe only experience
has brought about mastery. As underlined by Hounsell
et al. (2007 making reference to the work of Eraut 1995;
Morgan 2004; Claxton 1995) there is an ever present need to 'nurture the
evaluative 'connoisseurship' or acumen that is expected of experienced
assessors and which comes not just from familiarity with marking criteria
alone, but from first-hand experience in applying those criteria to a varied
range of submitted assignments or assessments and arriving at considered
judgments'. It is this experience I
mentioned above of applying criteria on a permanent basis that makes the
difference, what students lack and what tutors rarely implement. Also, as
argued by Sadler (1989 in Nicol
& Macfarlane‐Dick 2006) for students to be able to compare
and take action on feedback (and in my opinion be able to give valuable peer feedback)
'they must already possess some of the same evaluative skills as their teacher'.
Now, a skill is a technique which has been rehearsed and applied consciously so
many times that it has become an unconscious behaviour, that is a skill (Oxford
2011). This tells me that for students to
be able to 'have the same evaluative skills as their teacher' as Sadler argues,
then students need to be given the opportunities to work on the necessary
assessment and self assessment skills which will allow them to acquire develop
these skills over time which in fully in line with Yorke (2003) and Boud (2000 in op.cit.)
amongst others who argue that teachers then
need to do more to strengthen their students' self-assessment skills.
As can be
seen in Liu
& Carless (2006) theirs is an 'ongoing' project
which further supports my argument that although possible it is a strategy
which requires training over time. I particularly like their idea of peer feedback
as dialogue (p280) and see it as the would-be first step or 'precursor' as they
call it in my own context while their peer assessment with students grading the
work or performance of others as something not viable in the near future in my
current institution.
Many
benefits are offered in support of the idea that peer feedback promotes
learning. For instance, Falchikov (2001 in op.cit.) provides evidence that peer
feedback enhances learning because of the articulation of subject matter with
which student engage, students receive faster feedback from their peers than
from tutors (Gibbs 1999 in Liu & Carless 2006), learning become public
rather than private amongst others. Based on my own experience and evolution as
an online student, I particularly agree with their statement that 'Once
students are at ease with making their work public, we could create conditions
under which social learning might be facilitated' and that the level of threat
felt is minimised by the rapport built between peers. However, once again I
would argue that as long as peer feedback is the aim, not peer assessment, then
this would be a viable path in my context and would fully embrace Brown et al.'s
(in Liu & Carless 2006) argument that students rarely resist informal peer
feedback for the same three reasons given: 'dislike of judging peers in ways
that ‘count’; a distrust of the process; and the time involved.' The latter
being especially important as we are often constrained to cover the syllabus in
the given time so that students are ready for the exam at the end of the school
year.
Unfortunately,
out of Carless & Liu's (op.cit.) three suggestions for the future only two
would seem viable in my own context: strategies for engaging students with
criteria - which already happens to a small extent in the marking of writing
papers for Cambridge Preliminary and First Certificate exams, and cultivating a
course climate for peer feedback - which is also discreetly and implicitly done
through activities in which students display their work around the classroom
and are asked to choose the best piece, usually writing, while preparing a
justification for their choice either individually or in groups. Peer feedback
integrated with peer assessment is far away from becoming a reality because of
the constraints mentioned earlier. It is
encouraging to see that Carless & Liu's (2006) strategy for engaging
students with criteria and quality is something I already do to some extent as
they suggest (p287) involving students in the identification of standards and
the criteria representing those standards. In my case, I get students to
familiarise themselves in class and out of class with samples of written work
marked at different bands with examiner feedback while asking them to identify
the standards or features of what make a band 5 in First Certificate written
tasks a band 5. This is followed by discussion and although difficult at the
beginning of the school year - so 'introduced early on in their course' (Teaching
and Learning Centre 2012), through practice and over time as
I argued above, they develop to some extent this very specific skill which in
turn makes them more aware of their own performance and when applied
externally, of their peers'. Along the same lines and as argued by Sadler (2002
in op.cit.) high standard exemplars (typically previous student assignments)
are more effective than a focus on criteria. Again, I'm thrilled to see this in
the article as for years I have provided my CELTA, YL Extension to CELTA and
DELTA trainees with samples of assignments
which I have carefully selected and collected over the years for them to 'see'
the criteria 'in place'.
References
Hounsell, D., Xu, R. & Tai, C.M., 2007. Balancing
assessment of and assessment for learning Guide no 2. Higher Education,
(2), p.15.
Liu,
N.-F. & Carless, D., 2006. Peer feedback: the learning element of peer
assessment. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3), pp.279–290.
Nicol,
D.J. & Macfarlane‐Dick, D., 2006.
Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning:
a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher
Education, 31(2), pp.199–218.
Oxford,
R., 2011. Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies Applied
Li. C.N. Candlin and D.R. Hall, ed., Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Teaching
and Learning Centre, 2012. Self-assessment-and-peer-feedback.
