Peer Feedback: Mobilising Students for Learning
- learning906
- Oct 21
- 2 min read
Mobilising students as givers and receivers of peer feedback transforms it from something they simply receive to something they own and understand. Both roles bring reciprocal benefits: as students learn to give effective feedback, they sharpen their eye for quality, apply success criteria with precision, and internalise what success looks like (Figure 1).
However, Peer Feedback is fraught with problems, often falling short of its potential when peers lack the skills, trust, or shared criteria needed to give, receive and act on feedback. Research tells us that instructional support (i.e., scaffolding the peer feedback process) significantly boosts effectiveness.
What might this instructional support look like?
Some wise words of advice from schools we are partnering with about instructional support considerations include:
Begin with low-stakes tasks.
Use success criteria in a format they are already familiar with. Don’t overload them.
Use a short structured routine, such as TAG or Glow and Grow and don’t feel like you have to do the whole thing straight up. Break it into parts. For example, you might have students give one Glow the first few times so they get the hang of using success criteria and sentence prompts.
Model what quality feedback looks like.
Choose the partners - maybe try alternate ranking.
Make it part of the learning, not an add on.
Adapt routines and structures you already have to support peer feedback.
Here are some ideas from colleagues.
Idea 1: Build on what you already have
Recently, we had the pleasure of partnering with Mudgee Public School, NSW, and the discussion about Peer Feedback as part of Gallery Walks generated some practical ideas. Gallery Walks were a routine that students were already familiar with. Figure 2 outlines a summary of the ideas for leveraging these 'walks' for Peer Feedback.
Idea 2: Teach about feedback, in particular PRAISE.
You may not be aware, but praise has its pros and cons for impacting student learning. For more information, you might like to look here or here or here.
Too often, we hear students overusing praise in their Peer Feedback. Reflecting on our own teaching, one of the commitments we made was to reduce the amount of praise we were using that was not contributing to learning.
To do this we used the concept of a ‘swear jar’ (google that if you are not familiar) and made it the ‘praise’ jar. After explaining to the class some of the research about praise we shared the commitment to praise less and feedback more. If they heard us using praise, then they got a token in the jar with an agreed class action once the jar was full.
More ideas
How might you mobilise your students for more effective peer feedback?
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