Reconsidering Peer Feedback for Argumentative Essays

• In Event: Innovations in Peer and Teacher Feedback During Writing Instruction: Results From Three Institute of Education Sciences Studies

Abstract

Objective

This study examined 8th graders’ use of peer feedback in Scholar, an online writing environment. The study examined how the students’ peer reviews and feedback memos affected their essay revisions and their understanding of argumentation.

Theoretical Perspective

Peer review is an effective instructional technique for improving argument-driven writing and developing students' academic literacies (e.g. Graham & Perin, 2007). Studies have shown that both writers and reviewers may develop academic writing skills through reviewing, but evidence is mixed on whether students use peers’ recommendations to improve their writing. Studies of revision practices show that students make few global, meaning-changing revisions even while they engage in substantial proofreading or word-level editing (e.g. Beason, 1993; Cho & MacArthur, 2010). The challenge of revision, which requires high-level, abstract thinking, may explain the lack of meaning-level change in student work. Online writing environments such as Scholar allow researchers to closely examine students’ peer review and revision processes.

Methods

Using the Scholar Dashboard, researchers combined qualitative methods (textual analysis) with quantitative (word counts, change percentages) to collect and analyze data.
Data sources included drafts of 21 8th graders’ argumentative essays, peer feedback memos, peer review comments, and teachers’ assignment and rubrics. We analyzed students’ texts for text structure and argument elements, and coded their self-reviews and peer reviews for content and linguistic features. Bidirectional artifact analysis (Halverson & Magnifico, 2013) of students’ texts coded revision types, then traced the textual changes to the reviews.

Findings and Significance

Writing in Scholar, all students took a perspective, using evidence to make their arguments. After the first draft, students wrote self-reviews asking for feedback from peers; analysis demonstrates that authors focused on strengthening their arguments, requesting, for example “feedback on the support for my argument and how I could better persuade my reader.” Analysis of the resulting reviews shows that students used teacher-provided criteria to provide feedback, attending to organization, thesis, reasons and support, audience, word choice, and conventions. Many peers provided specific feedback: “It has a whole lot of facts but the facts aren’t specific… pictures of nessie, they can be faked or just be driftwood or some large fish.” Although students made few substantive revisions in their final drafts, the peer reviews and feedback memos provided evidence of students’ understanding of argumentation.
Often, only final drafts “count” when teachers assess students (Nystrand, et al, 1997); process-based artifacts such as peer reviews and memos are lost. Yet, final drafts may present a one-sided view of students’ writing skills. In this study, students who revised little demonstrated critical reading, writing, and editing skills as they made suggestions to strengthen peers’ arguments. Online tools like Scholar can thus assist teachers and researchers by capturing data on multiple writing processes. While studies have consistently shown that few students engage in the cognitively complex task of revision (Flower, et al, 1986), we suggest that failure to revise may not tell the whole story about students’ writing expertise.

Authors

• Sarah J. McCarthey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Alecia Marie Magnifico, University of New Hampshire

• Sonia Melanie Kline, Illinois State University