Using Peer Assessment to Inspire Reflection and Learning

Keith Topping

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815367642
• eBook ISBN: 9781351256865
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

There is increasingly strong evidence that K-12 learners who assess each other's work and then engage in related reflections, discussions, and negotiations benefit mutually from the process. In this practical volume, Keith J. Topping provides suggestions for implementing effective peer assessment across many classroom contexts and subjects. Using Peer Assessment to Inspire Reflection and Learning offers pre- and in-service teachers a variety of teaching strategies to best fit their particular students and school environments along with straightforward tools to evaluate peer assessment's impact on their classrooms.

1

Introduction

This chapter defines peer assessment and elaborates the characteristics of peer assessment in a typology, so you can be clear what kind of peer assessment you are talking about. Then for contrast we consider what is not peer assessment. The strengths and limitations of peer assessment are described. International vocabulary is discussed, leading to questions about why you should read this book and how you should read it.

What Is Peer Assessment?

Peer assessment is defined by your author as

an arrangement for learners to consider and specify the level, value, or quality of a product or performance of other equal-status learners, then learn further by giving elaborated feedback to and discussing their appraisals with those who were assessed to achieve a negotiated agreed outcome.

Products to be assessed could include writing, oral presentations, portfolios, test performance, or other skilled behaviors.

In the olden days children might have been asked to “specify the quality” by giving a mark or grade for the assessed item. This is a kind of summative assessment, and teachers using it might be concerned about its reliability and validity. But it gives no information to the learner about how to improve. These days the second part of the definition is much more important – it is through giving elaborated feedback with a rationale and examples and discussing other points of view that most learning is achieved. Subsequently (and after further independent reflection), the assessee revises the work in the light of the discussion. This kind of use is clearly a type of formative assessment.

Thus, the formative view of peer assessment is emphasized here, in which students help each other identify their strengths and weaknesses, target areas for remedial action, and develop metacognitive and other personal and professional skills. Peer feedback is available in greater volume and with greater immediacy than teacher feedback. A peer assessor with less skill at assessment but more time in which to do it can produce an assessment of equal reliability and validity to that of a teacher.

You might think that elaborated peer assessment sounds rather time consuming, and initially you would be right. But during the process both assessor and assessee are presented with many intellectual challenges, set in the context of a piece of work that the assessee feels rather strongly about. As a result, both assessor and assessee have to think quite deeply, as well as negotiate a settlement, so not only are their thought processes stimulated, but their social skills as well. Consequently they both learn – and not just in one domain.

These practical methods are designed so all can benefit, including assessors as well as assessees, irrespective of age, ability or disability. They are: inexpensive to use, require no special materials or complex technology, are flexible and durable in a wide range of settings, and are compatible with professional instruction of almost any type.

Initially, peer feedback should highlight positive aspects of the work in question. Then it should move on to aspects that might be improved (one hesitates to say “negative”). For instance, this may involve not merely indicating the number of errors but saying exactly where they are, how they are wrong, and possibly suggesting how they might be put right. Then the pair can address features that may be errors but are open to discussion. Then the pair can discuss what aspects are missing from the product which perhaps should be there.

Peer assessment came to widespread prominence about 20 years ago, and has become extremely popular in the last ten years. You will find it in the elementary (primary) classroom and in the high (secondary) school classroom. You will also find it in the staffroom, where teachers invite peer commentary on their own efforts from other teachers. And of course you will find it among teachers in training, who solicit peer feedback on their draft assignments.

Characteristics of Peer Assessment

There are many varieties of peer assessment, and below a typology is offered that enables teachers to clearly categorize what they want to do – while reminding them of variables that they might have forgotten. It is important to be aware of what you are not doing, as well as what you are. Different kinds of peer assessment are more or less suitable for particular classroom contexts, different levels of maturity in the students, different subjects and assessed activities.

As indicated above, a key difference is whether the peer assessment is formative or summative or both. Will it serve to give students indications of how to improve their work (formative), so the final version can be better? Or will it just indicate to the students how good or bad their work was (summative), with no opportunity for improvement?

Similarly, the peer assessment can be quantitative (assigning a number with respect to a grade) or qualitative (giving rich verbal feedback on positive and negative aspects and possibilities for improvement) or both. If students are merely to give a grade, they will need considerable experience in grading before their grades can be accepted as reliable. And even if they are reliable, they do not give the assessee any clues on how to improve their work the next time. By contrast, qualitative feedback gives rich ideas on how to improve the current piece of work, let alone future pieces of work. The assessee may not agree with all of these, but some negotiation of the nature of improvement is to be expected.

Other differences between types of peer assessment are more subtle. For example, are the peer assessments on single pieces of work, or are they of several pieces of work? A piece of writing is relatively easy to assess, as it has a beginning and an end. But even here you should not assume that peer assessors are only relevant after the writing has been completed. They could, for instance, be involved as the writer tries to develop the piece of writing. Other products of work may be more complicated. For example, in peer assessment of a group presentation, should the quality of discussion prior to the presentation itself be peer assessed?

And are peer assessments on the same kind of product? The product or output assessed can vary – writing, portfolios, presentations, oral statements, and so on. Assessment of writing is very different to assessment of an oral statement, which is in turn very different to peer assessment in music or physical education. Students will need some experience of each kind of peer assessment before they have confidence that they can manage the necessary roles.

Peer assessment can operate in different curriculum areas or subjects, which may impose different demands. For example, in physical education classes, can peers be trained to investigate differences in the way the other student runs, or catches a ball, or throws a javelin, and so on? In foreign language learning, how quickly might students be able to accurately respond to the comments or questions of a peer in the foreign language?

Will peer assessment be voluntary or compulsory? Although when it is used in a class, it would be a normal expectation that all students would participate, if it is compulsory from the beginning, some students might be very resistant to participation. It might be a better idea to say that it will be voluntary at the beginning. So few students are likely to opt out that after a short while they will realize that their opposition is unusual if not a little bizarre, and agree to join in.

Will it be anonymous or not? Of course, if you have reciprocal face-to-face peer assessment in one classroom, it is impossible to make it anonymous. But if you have one class assessing the work of another class, and giving feedback in writing or over the internet, it might be much more possible. But will you actually want the feedback to be anonymous? Peer feedback from somebody you know might be more powerful than that from somebody who is anonymous.

Clarification of the assessment criteria is essential, and peers may or may not be involved in establishing these criteria. In general, peers should always be involved in the development of the assessment criteria, even if the teacher has their own ideas or there is some external assessment system that needs to be acknowledged. The fact that the peer group will eventually come up with very similar criteria to those you would have given them does not take away from the value to the peers of feeling engaged in the process. As a result, they know the criteria better from the outset.

Rubrics or structured formats for feedback may or may not be provided. Assessment rubrics almost always help the assessors and the assessees. As above, they should be developed by the peer group. But having these criteria written down will help add consistency to the peer assessment.

Training in peer assessment may be given to assessors and/or assesses to a greater or lesser extent. It is surprising how many projects in the literature appeared to give no training to the peer assessors. Some training will be needed. The only question is: how extensive will it be? It can’t go on too long or the peer group will become restless to get some “real” activity. However, it should not merely involve the teacher talking. Some encounters with real life examples and some practice in actually applying peer assessment should certainly feature as part of the training.

Is any feedback provided expected to be balanced between positive and negative, or only one of these? When you are starting with peer assessment, you might be inclined to ask the peer assessors to provide only positive feedback. Then you get them used to the idea of being positive. Later, you can also ask them to give “suggestions for improvement,” which, of course, are open to discussion. Once students are competent with both aspects of feedback, you can give them free rein, except that every piece of assessed work should have some positives and some negatives.

Is feedback expected to lead to opportunities to rework the product in the light of feedback, or is there no opportunity for this? When you start peer assessment, you might only have assessors giving positive feedback. Then later you can have peer assessors giving negative feedback as well. Of course, we all hope that the current version of our work is the final one, so there might be some resistance to (apparently endlessly) reconsidering (writing this book was no exception to this general rule) – although this is almost always going to result in a better piece of work. Negative feedback indicates where the work needs improving, and hopefully there will be time available to achieve this. A related question here is that of audience – why should the peer assessee try to improve the work? Who will tell the difference? Children need to see what the point is of improving the work.

Is feedback expected to include hints or suggestions for improvement? Negative feedback will be much more acceptable if it is accompanied with some suggestions for improvement, even if those suggestions are not accepted. They give the assessee something to think about, and maybe they will then come up with a completely different way of doing things.

The nature of subsequent peer assessment activity may be very precisely specified or it may be left loose and open to student creativity. Again, this may be a developmental issue, in that at the beginning, peer assessors and assessees may need a fairly strict procedure. Later, however, this may become looser, so that assessors may begin to give more feedback in their own time, as they develop a sense of responsibility towards their assessee.

Does the interaction involve guiding prompts, sentence openers, cue cards or other scaffolding devices? At the beginning of peer assessment, one, some or all of these are a good idea, as some children (especially the shy ones) will have little idea how to begin a peer assessment conversation. Giving them some questions to use if they need to get them started is an excellent idea.

The participant constellation can vary, with consequent variation in joint responsibility for the assessed product. Assessors and the assessed may be individuals, pairs or groups. Will you have one assessor and one assessee? And will their peer assessment be reciprocal? Or will you have one cooperative group assessing another cooperative group – again, reciprocal or not? Be careful in supposedly cooperative groups that all members of the group have contributed. You could invite the group to assess each of its members on the size of their contribution to the group proceedings! Then the responsibility for the finished product is not unfairly apportioned to the lazy members of the group.

Peer assessment can be one-way, reciprocal, or mutual within a group. If you have an older class assessing a younger class, directionality is likely to be one-way. If you are working with same-ability pairs in one class, directionality is likely to be reciprocal. If you are working with groups, does the group decide on a mutually agreed assessment for another group, or are the separate peer assessments of the other group to be taken into account (requiring an agreed group assessment gives the group another valuable learning experience)?

Matching of students may be deliberate and selective or it may be random or accidental. If you are new to the class it may need to be random. If you know something about the class members you can be more careful. Matching may take account only of academic factors, or also involve social differences. You may decide that you want the most able assessing the least able (not recommended). Or you may decide that you want the top half of the class assessing the bottom half of the class. Or you may decide that you want students to be matched based on having similar abilities. Or you may decide that while ability is relevant, personality and social issues are also relevant. So you may wish to avoid matching a dominant but stupid boy with a timid but clever girl, for instance.

Assessors and assessed may come from the same year of study or from different years. If you have a colleague from a class of a similar age who is also interested, you could certainly see if the two classes could be matched up for the purposes of peer assessment. If the classes are more or less of the same size, you have an ideal opportunity. But most teachers will want to experiment first within their own class.

The assessors and assessees may be of the same ability, or deliberately of different ability. If they are of the same ability, you can expect a rich dialogue between them. If they are of different ability, the flow may be more one way, with the more able child dominating the proceedings.

The amount of background experience students have in peer assessment can be very variable. Peer assessment may represent a considerable challenge to, and generate considerable resistance in, new initiates. If they have previous experience, it may have been positive, negative or both. So bear in mind the previous experience that these students might have had in previous classes. You might want to ask them about that right at the beginning.

Students from different cultural backgrounds may be very different in acceptance of peer assessment. In particular, students from a Middle Eastern or Asian background may have great difficulty accepting peer assessment. In the case of Middle Eastern students, resistance has a lot to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Using Peer Assessment to Inspire Reflection and Learning
• Student Assessment for Educators
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Peer Assessment in Practice
• 3 Organizing Peer Assessment
• 4 Theory and Evidence on Peer Assessment
• 5 Evaluating Peer Assessment
• 6 Sustaining and Embedding Peer Assessment
• Index