Issues of cultural appropriateness and pedagogical efficacy: exploring peer review in a second language writing class

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate (a) whether peer review is an effective pedagogical activity with adult Chinese students in the teaching of second language (L2) academic writing and (b) how factors such as perceptions of the influence of peer reviewers’ L2 proficiency, previous experience with peer review, feedback preferences, and culturally-based beliefs and practices relate to the effectiveness of the pedagogical activity. Participants were 20 English-as-an-L2 learners from China who were enrolled in an academic writing class for postgraduate students at a Singaporean university. Data included first drafts of an academic writing assignment, written peer comments, revised drafts of the assignment, responses to a questionnaire, and interviews. Quantitative analyses of the peer comments and revisions to the drafts show that significant improvement in the revised drafts was linked to peer feedback. Further statistical analyses indicate that the learner variables of interest did not affect the effectiveness of the peer review activity. In addition, qualitative analyses of the questionnaire data and the interviews reveal a general acceptance of peer review as a socioculturally appropriate pedagogical activity for Chinese students. The results of the study are interpreted with an understanding of its limitations, and directions for further research are also discussed.     

Graduate students’ self-reported perspectives regarding peer feedback and feedback from writing consultants

This study reported how ten Taiwanese Master’s students perceived their experiences of receiving feedback given by their peers and writing consultants to revise a shortened version of their thesis proposals. Collected over the course of one semester, data included students’ writing portfolios and interviews with them. Analysis of the data revealed three major themes: (1) The participants felt quite positive about providing and receiving peer feedback, although they seemed cautious toward language-related peer comments; (2) they generally had positive experience with the writing consultants, although the perceived usefulness of the consultants’ feedback varied with individual consultants and (3) the two types of comments served different functions for students, and questions arose from the peer editing process could serve as prompts for writing consultation sessions. Possible future research directions as well as pedagogical implication are outlined to conclude the paper.     

The alignment of written peer feedback with draft problems and its impact on revision in peer assessment

Despite the wide use of peer assessment, questions about the helpfulness of peer feedback are frequently raised. In particular, it is unknown whether, how and to what extent peer feedback can help solve problems in initial texts in complex writing tasks. We investigated this research gap by focusing on the case of writing literature reviews in an academic writing course. The dataset includes two drafts from 21 students, sampled to represent a wide range of document qualities, and 84 anonymous peer reviews, involving 1,289 idea units. Our study revealed that: (1) at both substance and high prose levels, drafts of all quality levels demonstrated more common problems on advanced writing issues (e.g. counter-argument); (2) peer feedback was driven by difficulty of the problem rather than overall draft quality, peer comments were not well aligned with the relative frequency of problems, more comments were given to less difficult problems; (3) peer feedback had a moderate impact on revision, and importantly, receiving multiple comments on the same issue led to more repairs and improvement of draft quality, but consistent with the comments received, authors tended to fix basic problems more often. Implications for practice and research are drawn from these findings.     

英文写作元认知与同伴互评书面评语的关联性研究

基于元认知理论框架的英文写作元认知知识由个体知识、 任务知识、 策略知识三个变量构成,当这三个变量共同作用于个体认知活动中的某项具体写作行为时, 促使写作行为发生的学习模式会对学习者的英文写作过程产生影响。本文基于一项同伴互评学习模式下的英文书面评语写作活动的实证个案研究,探讨了同伴互评学习模式与英文写作元认知因素的关联及学生的英文书面评语的话语倾向对写作元认知知识构建的影响因素。     

名著阅读与同伴互评

本研究在某高校英语专业二年级泛读课程的名著阅读活动中引入同伴互评方法,结果发现：同伴在语言形式方面的批阅多于内容方面的批阅;同伴互评的正确率较高,而且有逐渐提高的趋势。同伴互评在一定程度上提高了学生阅读和撰写文章的认真程度。与教师评阅相比,同伴批阅没有明显的劣势。学生通过互评深化了对名著的理解,拓宽了思路;相互启发和督促,提高了写作水平,增进了彼此的了解,而且为未来的职业训练作了一定的铺垫。     

英语写作教学中同伴作文修改效果的实证研究

通过对48 名大学生英语写作中同伴作文修改的实证研究, 评价同伴作文修改对作文定稿的影响。具体研究大学生对同伴作文修改形式的认可情况(以更为熟悉的教师修改情况为参照) 以及在同伴作文修改过程中, 学生是如何针对作文内容、组织、词语、语法、以及技术失误等方面进行修改的。实证证明, 同伴作文修改是英语作文教学的一种有效方式。     

Self-regulation of peer feedback quality aspects through different dimensions of experience within prior peer feedback assignments

Although peer review is a widely-used pedagogical technique, its value depends upon the quality of the reviews that students produce, and much research remains to be done to systematically study the nature, causes, and consequences of variation in peer review quality. We propose a new framework that conceptualizes five larger dimensions of peer review quality and then present a study that investigated three specific peer review quality constructs in a large dataset and further explored how these constructs change through different types of self-regulation peer reviewing experiences. Peer review data across multiple assignments were analyzed from 2,092 undergraduate students enrolled in one of three offerings of a biology course at a large public research university in the United States. Peer review quality was measured in terms of comment amount, comment accuracy, and rating accuracy; the measures of reviewing experience focused upon self-regulated learning factors such as practice, feedback, others’ modeling, and relative performance. Meta-correlation (for testing reliability, separability, and stability) and meta-regression (as a time-series analysis for testing the relationship of changes across assignments in reviewing quality with experiences as reviewer and reviewee) are used to establish the robustness of effects and meaningful variation of effects across course offerings and assignments. Results showed that there were three meaningful review quality constructs (i.e., were measured reliably, separable, and semi-stable over time). Further, all three showed changes in response to previous reviewer and reviewee experiences, but only feedback helpfulness, in particular, showed effects of all four examined types of self-regluation experiences (practice, feedback, others’ modeling, and relative performance). The findings suggest that instructors can improve review quality by providing comment prompt scaffolds that lead to longer comments as well as by matching authors with similarly performing reviewers.     

高校学报审稿人审稿质量的影响因素分析

审稿人个体因素、制度性因素、审稿方式因素以及审稿费多少、稿件人情因素、利益冲突等是影响高校学报审稿人审稿质量的重要因素。为了提高审稿人审稿质量,确保评审意见与稿件实际水平相符,应进一步分析影响高校学报审稿人审稿质量的相关因素,并探究相应的控制措施。     

Outcomes of synergetic peer assessment: first-year experience

Active participation in learning activities and reviewing assessment activity can facilitate learners engaged in these processes. This case study reports student experiences of the process of peer assessment with teacher guidance in a group project for a first-year nursing course with 153 students. Twenty groups of students were assigned roles in exploring one of the two scenarios: one involved analysing diabetes mellitus and the other considered colorectal carcinoma, in each case covering provision of acute nursing care in hospitals and preparing health promotion strategies in a community. Each group also provided comments to the group that worked on the other scenario, based on prearranged assessment criteria. After receiving comments from their peer group, each group was then allowed to revise their drafts prior to final submission. The teacher’s input would be offered, if the peer feedback was inaccurate or insufficient. A survey was conducted to explore the learning experiences, and three semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted to triangulate findings with the survey. The first-year students expressed the need for both peer feedback and the lecturer’s direct guidance.     

Charting the routes to revision: An interplay of writing goals,peer comments,and self-reflections from peer reviews

Building upon self-regulated learning theories, we examined the nature of student writing goals and the relationship of these writing goals to revision alone and in combination with two other important sources of students’ self-regulated revision—peer comments on their writing, and reflections for their own writing obtained from reviewing others’ writing. Data were obtained from a large introductory undergraduate class in the context of two 1000-word writing assignments involving online peer review and a required revision. We began with an investigation of students’ free response learning goals and a follow-up quantitative survey about the nature and structure of these writing goals. We found that: (a) students tended to create high-level substantive goals more often, (b) students change their writing goals across papers even for a very similar assignment, and (c) their writing goals divide into three dimensions: general writing goals, genre writing goals, and assignment goals. We then closely coded and analyzed the relative levels of association of revision changes with writing goals, peer comments, reflections from peer review, and combinations of these sources. Findings suggest that high-level revisions are commonly associated with writing goals, are especially likely to occur for combinations of the three sources, and peer comments alone appeared to make the largest contributions to revision.     

Students’ perceptions about peer assessment for writing: their origin and impact on revision work

We investigate students’ negative perceptions about an online peer assessment system for undergraduate writing across the disciplines. Specifically, we consider the nature of students’ resistance to peer assessment; what factors influence that resistance; and how students’ perceptions impact their revision work. We do this work by first examining findings from an end-of-course survey administered to 250 students in ten courses across six universities using an online peer assessment system called SWoRD for their writing assignments. Those findings indicate that students have the most positive perceptions of SWoRD in those courses where an instructor graded their work in addition to peers (as opposed to peer-only grading). We then move to an in-depth examination of perceptions and revision work among 84 students using SWoRD and no instructor grading for assessment of writing in one university class. Findings from that study indicate that students sometimes regard peer assessment as unfair and often believe that peers are unqualified to review and assess students’ work. Furthermore, students’ perceptions about the fairness of peer assessment drop significantly following students’ experience in doing peer assessment. Students’ fairness perceptions—and drops in those perceptions—are most significantly associated with their perceptions about the extent to which peers’ feedback is useful and positive. However, students’ perceptions appear to be unrelated to the extent of their revision work. This research fills a considerable gap in the literature regarding the origin of students’ negative perceptions about peer assessment, as well as how perceptions influence performance.     

Toward Expert Thinking: How curriculum case writing prompts the development of theory-based professional knowledge in student teachers

The present paper explores what, and how, student teachers may learn about theory and practice from writing cases, and examines some pedagogical features that may contribute to these results. Drawing on data collected from our course "Principles of Learning for Teaching", including student cases from outline to final drafts and students' course reflections, we found that students' successive case drafts demonstrated a development from naïve generalizations to sophisticated, theory-based explanations of the issues at play in their cases. In particular, we suggest that students' cases demonstrated some of the moves that Berliner (1986, 1991) identified as characteristic of more "expert" thinking about teaching. We propose that reading theory in context with writing cases, that sharing cases with peer readers, that specific, theoretically grounded, and concrete feedback from instructors, and that providing multiple opportunities for revision may have been most useful in helping student teachers learn to think like a teacher.     

影响高校学报审稿期限的主要因素及对策

对全国81家高校学报审稿期限现状的调查数据表明：我国目前大多数高校学报由于受人员、效率、审稿人、作者等因素影响，审稿期限过长。为缩短审稿期限，提高学报出版的时效性及学术信息的应用价值，学报编辑部应通过选准审稿人、做好稿件退修工作、发展网上审稿等举措，加快审稿运作周期。     

Using peer feedback in a Master's programme: a multiple case study

This article draws on the findings of a longitudinal case study, which investigated the writing experiences of five students who spoke English as an additional language (EAL). The major interest was in examining what it was like to be an EAL writer and what changes occurred in EAL students' perceptions of academic writing and of themselves as academic writers during their one-year Taught Masters course at a major UK University. This article reflects on the perceptions of peer feedback held by research participants and their engagement with providing and receiving peer comments. Although peer feedback is often viewed as an attractive tool for supporting student writing, most participants did not fully capitalise on the benefits of these practices. Such factors as students' lack of prior peer feedback and their perceptions of peers' ability to provide valid feedback constituted potential barriers to the success of peer feedback. The article suggests that the use of well-structured collaborative activities and tutors' intervention are required for peer feedback to be effective.     

The effects of skill diversity on commenting and revisions

The use of peer assessment to evaluate students’ writing is one recommended method that makes writing assignments possible in large content classes (i.e., more than 75 students). However, many instructors and students worry about whether students of all ability levels are capable of helping their peers. We examine how ability pairing (e.g., high-ability student with high-ability student versus high-ability student with low-ability student) changes key characteristics of feedback to determine which pairings are likely to benefit students most. A web-based reciprocal peer-review system was used to facilitate the peer review of students’ writing of two papers. Over 1,100 comments given to writers from their peers were coded for several relevant categories: type of feedback, type of criticism, focus of problem, focus of solution, and implementation. Overall, creating peer-review groups such that students receive feedback from someone of a dissimilar ability appeared to be most beneficial. High-ability writers received similar kinds of feedback from high-ability versus low-ability peers. By contrast, the low-ability writers received more comments that identified problems focusing on substance issues from high-ability reviewers. In addition, the low-ability writers implemented a higher percentage of the comments from the high-ability reviewers.     

Teacher, self and peer evaluation of lesson plans written by preservice teachers

The study investigated the effects of three types of evaluation on preservice teachers’ performance, knowledge and attitudes related to writing lesson plans that incorporate technology. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions: teacher-evaluation, self-evaluation or peer-evaluation. All groups completed three class periods of instruction on writing lesson plans, then each subject submitted his/her draft lesson plan. The drafts were evaluated by assigned evaluators (teacher, self or peer), who provided scores and written feedback on a 15-item rubric. Students then revised their lesson plans into final form. All three treatment groups improved their lesson plans significantly from draft version to final version, with the teacher-evaluation group showing significantly greater improvement and writing significantly better final lesson plans than each of the other two groups. Teacher-evaluation and self-evaluation groups had significantly higher scores on a knowledge-based posttest than the peer-evaluation group. Several suggestions are discussed for making further improvements in the self-evaluation and peer-evaluation processes.     

How geographic maps increase recall of instructional text

This article reviews research on how geographic maps influence the recall of associated text. Drawing on literature from cartography and educational, experimental, and cognitive psychology, the authors describe a model of map-text learning based on dual-coding theory and focused on activities that take place during working memory operations. The instructional implications of the model are explored, and recommendations for instructional applications are given.The authors wish to thank Jenine Doran, Kent Rittschof, Michael Verdi, and three anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.