Peer and teacher feedback on student writing

Peterson, S. S., & Portier, C. (2014). Grade one peer and teacher feedback on student writing. Education 3-13, 42(3), 237-257. doi: 10.1080/03004279.2012.670256

Background

The authors highlighted that research has made a strong case for using peer feedback to support adult and adolescent writers but has not provided evidence that peer feedback might be a developmentally appropriate practice for much younger children.

Aims

This study examined the content of both peer and teacher feedback and the ways in which students used feedback from both sources to revise their writing. The authors also examined the ways in which the Grade 1 teacher supported her students in providing useful feedback and in making the most of their peers’ feedback when revising their writing.

Sample

The participants were a first-grade teacher and her twenty Grade 1 students.

Method

The data included field notes and audio-recordings of the teacher’s lessons and student interactions during peer feedback sessions, photographs of student writing drafts and revisions made during the feedback sessions, student interviews, and 93 pieces of student writing.

Findings

The findings indicated that the students revised their writing in response to 90% of teacher and peer feedback. All the students were able to comment on some aspect of the writing that they liked or wanted changed. While the higher ability students provided more useful criterion-based feedback due to their more advanced writing development, all students were able to provide useful reader-based feedback. Students who were of lower academic ability provided useful feedback to peers on the pictures or content of their writing as readily as did students of higher academic ability. The teacher gave slightly more feedback on conventions than on content, while the students gave slightly more feedback to their peers on content. As the teacher built the routine of weaving feedback into every aspect of the writing process, this might have helped all students develop confidence in sharing and giving feedback.

Implications

The authors highlighted that although the results of this study could not be generalised widely to other Grade 1 classrooms, it provided encouraging evidence of how the written compositions were improved and how writing development was enhanced through the giving and receiving of peer feedback. The authors saw the potential of peer and teacher feedback to support students’ revisions of their writing and their writing development.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis.