Peer feedback on academic writing: undergraduate students’ peer feedback role, peer feedback perceptions and essay performance

Abstract

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)

Supportive Peer Feedback in Tertiary Education: Analysis of Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions

“…Among the highest correlations were those between the self-efficacy of pre-service teachers receiving feedback (Q5): (i.e., the extent to which the peer instructional strategies and the selected learning tasks are cognitively challenging to improve receiver feedback [27]), were correlated with the pre-service teachers' peer feedback involvement (Q1), autonomy (Q3), and structure (Q4) categories. Indeed, the cumulative experience of multiple peer feedback occurrences over time may positively affect pre-service teachers' attitudes, beliefs, and/or performance [17], and therefore favor positive perceptions of self-efficacy, and, later, perceptions of improved learning. In fact, the pre-service teachers confirmed this by stating that receiving structured feedback from their peers was a way to improve their learning, and their feelings of autonomy and being involved.…”

“…The mutual process of receiving and giving feedback was highly correlated (Q1 with Q7) by all the pre-service teachers, as they felt that by being providers or receivers they were highly involved in the feedback process. For instance, they felt the benefits of providing vs. receiving peer feedback were the same when it came to modifying and improving their writing assignments and performance in terms of content, structure, and style [17]. (That said, there are more gains in writing ability for feedback providers than for feedback receivers [54]).…”

“…Feedback can be observed from the perspectives of the provider or receiver and benefit both parties involved in the learning process [15][16][17]. For instance, when analyzing the work of their peers, the feedback providers must first reflect on their own work to improve the quality of what they themselves produce [18,19].…”

“…Finally, reflection is reinforced because, when articulating an evaluation judgment, the feedback provider must offer a coherent explanation. Although peer feedback is also mediated by students' perceptions of the critique they have received [17,23], typically students perceive the benefits of providing feedback rather than receiving it [17,24,25]. Generally, in mediating peer feedback, students who provide and receive feedback are more motivated when seeing themselves totally involved in the activities undertaken in class [21].…”

Applying Criteria to Examples or Learning by Comparison: Effects on Students' Evaluative Judgment and Performance in Writing

“…Students often perceive the quality of the peer feedback as poor, with comments provided at a too superficial level (Patton, 2012;Yucel et al, 2014). In particular, students have the tendency to focus in their feedback at form rather than at content, and they praise their peers more than teachers do (Patchan et al, 2009;Huisman et al, 2018).…”