2 Chapter 2: Peer Review

Section 2.1 Tessa Leibee: Student Researcher

Article Review to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Peer Review 

In their article, “The Reliability and Validity of Peer Review of Writing in High School AP English Classes,” Christian Schunn, Amanda Godley, and Sara DeMartino explore the ability of AP students to provide effective writing feedback to their peers. To conduct their research, Schunn, Godley, and DeMartino gathered data from twenty-eight AP English Language and Composition teachers, which resulted in 1,215 students participating in the study (Schunn et al. 15). Participating teachers were instructed to assign a peer review activity through Peerceptiv, “a Web-based system in which authors and reviewers are anonymous so students feel comfortable being more honest in their feedback,” after giving a presentation on quality peer feedback (Schunn et al. 15). Students received two types of feedback on their essays: “open-ended feedback provided by peer reviewers and scores that reflected the mean (average) of the reviewers’ numerical ratings” (Schunn et al. 15). The reliability of student assessments were examined by how closely students’ numerical ratings averaged for the same essay.

Schunn, Godley, and DeMartino found that peer reviews conducted through Peerceptiv were generally accurate. Correlations between teacher and student ratings were “higher than what is typically seen between two teachers’ ratings on a set of essays,” which suggested that “the accuracy of students’ ratings of their peers’ essays, when calculated by taking the average of five students’ ratings, is high” (Schunn et al. 20). In addition to the assessment that peer reviews are generally accurate, the research also noted that, “Although students generally thought that they had received good advice from their peers, the strongest perceived benefits involved seeing successful strategies and weaknesses in other students’ essays” (Schunn et al. 20). Overall, the research effectively demonstrates that peer reviews of writing are reliable, and fuels the positive discourse surrounding the utilization of peer review in the classroom.

Works Cited

Schunn, Christian, et al. “The Reliability and Validity of Peer Review of Writing in High School AP English Classes.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 60, no 1, July 2016, pp.13-23. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.525. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

Understanding the Role of Peer Review in Effective Feedback

Initially, as a student and future educator, I was entirely opposed to peer reviews. I disliked the concept of peers viewing each others’ work, simply because I felt as though assignments should remain confidential between a student and their teacher. However, over the course of the semester I became accustomed to peer reviews, and have even gained an appreciation for them.

As a student, my peers and I are frequently required to post Discussion Board threads on Blackboard. We are tasked with posting a variety of writings, and are expected to “respond” or “peer review” the work of at least one other student. Despite my initial distaste for peer reviews, they proved to be beneficial to me as a student. This method of discussion allowed me to gain insight on my peers’ thoughts about my writing—both ideally and mechanically—from which I could make revisions before submitting my work to be graded.

As a future educator, I have had the opportunity to observe peer reviews from a detached lens. In Dr. Mascle’s English 200 course, students were provided with a “Peer Feedback Chart” for peer-reviewing their classmates’ essays. The chart tasked the students with identifying the essay’s main idea and driving question, while allowing students to leave questions for the writer. The chart enabled the students to verify that their audience understood the main idea of their essay, and gave them an opportunity to edit their essay draft to answer any questions that their audience may have had.

Overall, peer reviews have shown to be beneficial to student writers in many aspects. Not only are peer reviews favorable for the grades of students, as they have ample time to revise their essay based on the comments they receive, but they also enable students to grow as writers through exposure to different styles of writing. Through peer reviews, students are able to make sure their ideas are perceived in the way they intended, and make edits to any part of their work that may have led readers astray. Through my experiences as both a student writer and a future educator, I have observed that constructive criticism from peers can be as equally advantageous as feedback from an educator.

Section 2.2 Kaya Bowman: Student Researcher

Article Review to Highlight Perspective in Peer Review

In hopes to steer fellow educators in the direction of successful peer-review tactics, Nelson Graff discussed his read-aloud protocol in “Approaching Authentic Peer Review.” He explained how he “wanted students to engage in authentic writing to master the complex decisions authors must confront when they compose for real audiences,” in contrast to the simplified desire to “fix” others’ papers. The development of his read-aloud strategy appears to be highly beneficial, as it blends well into curriculums, meets the desire to expand beyond literary amendments, and facilitates progress in students in reading complex texts (81).

To ensure that students comprehend the appropriate ways of peer-reviewing, Graff mentions his modeling of expectations throughout the process. In addition to this constant, there are other measures to keep students on track, such as the examination of professional publications, for “experience with published [works] will help them understand how the genre works and make it easier” when crafting their own pieces, and a handout to reinforce the roles of authors and readers (83-84).

Works Cited

Graff, Nelson. “Approaching Authentic Peer Review.” The English Journal, vol. 98, no. 5, 2009, pp. 81–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40503303. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

The Functionality of Perspective in Providing Feedback

There are multiple factors that play into giving criticism, especially through the art of peer review. As referred to in Graff’s commentary, his desire was to veer students away from “fixing” a paper and more towards understanding the author’s words. To do so, he had to clarify roles and their actions, as well as construct a process that would secure a comprehensively-driven mentality versus one that sought to amend. I see this as a method of filtering feedback through a specific lens in order to create appropriate responses, or, to dub this in a simpler fashion, give feedback through the appropriate perspective.

Consider the “genre” of a literary piece. Though this word is not being conventionally used, it still represents a distinction between types of works, such as the ones I examined during my collegiate career at Morehead State University. As an English Education major, part of my student duties were to provide instructional and beneficial feedback to a variety of student works in and out of the university. I assisted in aiding 9th grade students at Rowan County Senior High School with their TED Talk scripts, formatted like an argumentative and/or persuasive speech. We, as the feedback providers, were instructed to focus on improving the claim’s comprehension, such as in association with structure or phrasing, instead of more technical aspects such as grammar and punctuation. I did as expected with multiple students, rotated out at five-minute intervals, suggesting further elaboration of particular pieces of evidence to support their argument.

This same perspective, however, is not applicable to just any piece of literature. Another assignment was to respond to journal entries written to us by 7th grade students, the content of which was less professionally-focused. The purpose of the journals was to connect with students on a more personal level – establishing commonalities and sharing aspects of our lives. Such content does not require comments regarding paragraph structure or the phrasing of a thesis statement, hence my emphasis of perspective when providing feedback. It alters what aspects of a work to seriously consider and vice versa, therefore contributing to a specific purpose, such as strengthening an argument or building a relationship.

Section 2.3 Avery Lunsford: Student Researcher

Article Review to Understand Student’s Perception of Peer Review 

In Adam Loretto, Sara DeMartino, and Amanda Godley’s article, “Secondary Students’ Perceptions of Peer Review of Writing”, they investigate how students, specifically high school students, feel about peer review. The research was intended to understand how effective peer review is from the perspective of the average high school student. They understand how peer review has been proven helpful to students, “ Peer review is most beneficial when it guides students to focus on the writer’s ideas rather than sentence-level edits” (Loretto, Adam, et al. 136), but they wanted to conduct this research to find out how students feel about it on a personal level.

Loretto, DeMartino, Godley approached students from four different local high schools, all schools and students listed under pseudonyms, given to students from many different ethnic backgrounds, and all students used the same peer review program, SWoRD, which stands for Scaffolded Writing and Rewriting in the Disciplines. They conducted interviews through online questionnaires for the students several times throughout the school year. The main goal of the research was to hear students’ opinions about the peer review process. Research findings showed that “Students across all four schools in our study perceived peer review in general and SWoRD specifically as beneficial to their academy” (Loretto, Adam, et al.146). Additionally, the researchers discovered that “80% of students agreed or strongly agreed that peer review was beneficial to their writing” (Loretto, Adam, et al.146). Not only did the researchers approach students but they also interviewed 17 teachers with questionnaires as well. This process was to gain knowledge about how peer review was being introduced to students and how long each teacher spent on addressing peer review. When analyzing the data from teachers, the researchers developed codes for each falling under the two categories of ‘Benefit’ or ‘Challenge’. They found that there were more benefits than challenges. For example, one of the teachers stated “They learned the importance of giving detailed, constructive feedback” (Loretto, Adam, et al.Table 4, 145) and 7 of the other interviewed educators said statements similar to this and fell under the same ‘Benefit’ code.

Overall, this research allows educators to see how students feel towards peer review and how it directly affects their performance in an educational setting. This insightful research provides valuable information that could change a teachers approach to how or if they utilize peer review in their classrooms. By understanding and further developing the role of peer review in effective feedback, educators can adjust their approach to peer review on a more individual level to provide their students a quality writing experience in a secondary school setting.

Works Cited

Loretto, Adam, et al. “Secondary Students’ Perceptions of Peer Review of Writing.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 51, no. 2, 2016, pp. 134–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24889912. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

Examining the Effects of Peer Review as Constructive Feedback

Personally, I never found peer review to be extremely helpful until I arrived at college. In ENG 382, we conducted peer reviews for each of the zero drafts we produced in class. I began to notice that these reviews became more and more helpful to me as a writer and I felt as though I grew more confident when it was my turn to provide feedback. These reviews created what I found to be a collaborative learning environment where peers could positively critique and review each other’s work.

This skill carried over into when I did field experience hours at Rowan County Senior High School. As a Secondary English Education student, I was instructed to give feedback to Honors English students TEDTalk drafts. While giving these students feedback, I was noticing some of the skills that we had discussed in ENG 382 such as focusing on big ideas rather than mechanical mistakes and making sure to give positive criticism. This provided a chance for me to practice giving feedback to students and allowed students to engage with and benefit from review.