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van Driel b and Paul van den Broek c a leiden university graduate school of teaching (iclon), leiden, the netherlands; b melbourne graduate school of teaching, the university of melbourne, melbourne, Australia; c department of educational science, leiden university, leiden, the netherlands ABSTRACT Within the higher education context, peer feedback is frequently applied as an instructional method. Research on the learning mechanisms involved in the peer feedback process has covered aspects of both providing and receiving feedback. However, a direct comparison of the impact that providing and receiving peer feedback has on students' writing performance is still lacking. The current study compared the writing performance of undergraduate students (N = 83) who either provided or received anonymous written peer feedback in the context of an authentic academic writing task. In addition, we investigated whether students' peer feedback perceptions were related to the nature of the peer feedback they received and to writing performance. Results showed that both providing and receiving feedback led to similar improvements of writing performance. The presence of explanatory comments positively related both to how adequate students perceived the peer feedback to be, as well as to students' willingness to improve based upon it. However, no direct relation was found between these peer feedback perceptions and students' writing performance increase. The reader as evaluator imposes additional goals or criteria on the text… In a sense then, the process of evaluation simply turns up the power on the reading process: It enlarges the set of constraints that the mental representation one is building must meet and turns reading into testing. (Flower et al. 1986, 23)

Peer feedback is frequently implemented with academic writing tasks in higher education. However, a quantitative synthesis is still lacking for the impact that peer feedback has on students' writing performance. The current study conveyed two types of observations. First, regarding the impact of peer feedback on writing performance, this study synthesized the results of 24 quantitative studies reporting on higher education students' academic writing performance after peer feedback. Engagement in peer feedback resulted in larger writing improvements compared to (no-feedback) controls (g ¼ 0.91 [0.41, 1.42]) and compared to self-assessment (g ¼ 0.33 [0.01, 0.64]). Peer feedback and teacher feedback resulted in similar writing improvements (g ¼ 0.46 [-0.44, 1.36]). The nature of the peer feedback significantly moderated the impact that peer feedback had on students' writing improvement, whereas only a theoretically plausible, though non-significant moderating pattern was found for the number of peers that students engaged with. Second, this study shows that the number of well-controlled studies into the effects of peer feedback on writing is still low, indicating the need for more quantitative, methodologically sound research in this field. Findings and implications are discussed both for higher education teaching practice and future research approaches and directions.

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We present a study on the effect of instruction on collaboration in a collaborative discovery learning environment. The instruction we used, called RIDE, is built upon four principles identified in the literature on collaborative processes: Respect, Intelligent collaboration, Deciding together, and Encouraging. In an experimental study, a group of learners (ages 15-17) receiving this instruction was compared to a control group. The learners worked in dyads on separate computers in a shared discovery learning environment in the physics domain of collisions, communicating through a chat channel. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the logged actions in the learning environment and the chat protocols showed that the RIDE instruction can lead to more constructive communication, and improved discovery learning activities, as expected, although no direct effect on discovery learning results was found. This study shows the benefits of providing instruction on effective communication and the learning process in a collaborative discovery learning situation.

Increased levels of psychological stress during adolescence have been associated with a decline in academic performance, school dropout and increased risk of mental health problems. Intervening during this developmental period may prevent these problems. The school environment seems particularly suitable for interventions and over the past decade, various school-based stress reduction programs have been developed. The present study aims to evaluate the results of (quasi-)experimental studies on the effectiveness of school-based intervention programs targeting adolescent psychological stress and to investigate moderators of effectiveness. A three-level random effects meta-analytic model was conducted. The search resulted in the inclusion of k = 54 studies, reporting on analyses in 61 independent samples, yielding 123 effect sizes (N = 16,475 individuals). The results indicated a moderate overall effect on psychological stress. Yet, significant effects were only found in selected student samples. School-based intervention programs targeting selected adolescents have the potential to reduce psychological stress. Recommendations for practice, policy and future research are discussed.

Teachers have difficulty using data from Curriculum-based Measurement (CBM) progress graphs of students with learning difficulties for instructional decision-making. As a first step in unraveling those difficulties, we studied teachers' comprehension of CBM graphs. Using think-aloud methodology, we examined 23 teachers' ability to read, interpret, and link CBM data to instruction for fictitious graphs and their own students' graphs. Additionally, we examined whether graph literacy-measured with a self-report question and graph-reading skills test-affected graph comprehension. To provide a framework for understanding teachers' graph comprehension, we also collected data from "gold-standard" experts. Results revealed that teachers were reasonably proficient at reading the data, but had more difficulty with interpreting and linking the data to instruction. Graph literacy was related to some but not all aspects of teachers' CBM graph-comprehension ability. Implications for training teachers to comprehend and use CBM progress data for decision-making are discussed. About the AuthorsRoxette M. van den Bosch, MSc, is a Ph.D. student of the Department of Education and Child Studies (specialization Learning Disabilities) at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research interests include data-based decision-making, Curriculumbased Measurement, and teachers' graph-comprehension and data-use skills.Christine A. Espin, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Education and Child Studies (Special Education / Learning Disabilities) at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research interests include teachers' data-based decision-making, Curriculum-based Measurement in reading, writing, and content-area learning for secondary-school students with learning disabilities, and reading comprehension interventions for students with reading difficulties.Siuman Chung, MSc, is a Ph.D. student of the Department of Education and Child Studies (specialization Learning Disabilities) at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research interests include Curriculum-based Measurement in reading for secondaryschool students, and teachers' data-based decision-making. Nadira Saab, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the ICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching, The Netherlands. Her research interests involve the impact of powerful and innovative learning methods and approaches on learning processes and learning results, such as collaborative learning, technology enhanced learning, (formative) assessment and motivation.

Regulation of the learning process is an important condition for efficient and effective learning. In collaborative learning, students have to regulate their collaborative activities (team regulation) next to the regulation of their own learning process focused on the task at hand (task regulation). In this study, we investigate how support of collaborative inquiry learning can influence the use of regulative activities of students. Furthermore, we explore the possible relations between task regulation, team regulation and learning results. This study involves tenth-grade students who worked in pairs in a collaborative inquiry learning environment that was based on a computer simulation, Collisions, developed in the program SimQuest. Students of the same team worked on two different computers and communicated through chat. Chat logs of students from three different conditions are compared. Students in the first condition did not receive any support at all (Control condition). In the second condition, students received an instruction in effective communication, the RIDE rules (RIDE condition). In the third condition, students were, in addition to receiving the RIDE rules instruction, supported by the Collaborative Hypothesis Tool (CHT), which helped the students with formulating hypotheses together (CHT condition). The results show that students overall used more team regulation than task regulation. In the RIDE condition and the CHT condition, students regulated their team activities most often. Moreover, in the CHT condition the regulation of team activities was positively related to the learning results. We can conclude that different measures of support can enhance the use of team regulative activities, which in turn can lead to better learning results.