Attitudes toward peer assessment in initial teacher education students: an exploratory case study

This paper explores the attitudes of Design and Technology (D&T) initial teacher education students toward peer assessment. Through a small scale case study, the research uses a quasi-experimental approach to examine participant’s perception of peer assessment prior and subsequent to a set of experiential intervention activities that were designed to develop a democratic and dialogic conceptulisation of peer assessment rooted in critical pedagogy. It was hypothesised that exposure to these intervention activities might alter participant’s perceptions of the peer assessment process. Findings from the research suggest this hypothesis to be accurate and appear to reveal a change in participant attitudes to peer assessment from one dominated by teacher-centred, or didactic, understandings to one where the role of student voice should be central. The subsequent interpretation and discussion seeks to illuminate the value of understanding how such an approach to peer assessment might help develop learners’ growing ability to take responsibility for their own learning and contribute to developing D&T assessment practice.