Browsing by Subject "peer learning"

Goals. The goal in my thesis is to describe how six-graders give peer feedback when learning to write. My focus is especially on textual concepts the pupils are using in their feedback comments and on the ways readers express their evaluative experience. In regard to this I analyse what sort of learning this feedback represents. To give my thesis a background and a context I introduce previous research on cooperative learning, feedback and concept learning. Methods. My research is a qualitative case study and my method is content analysis. My data has been collected as a part of RokKi-project and it contains 23 stories and 119 peer feedback comments given to them. The feedback comments have been written not only by pupils but also two student teachers, a teacher of didactics and the class teacher. Majority of the feedback comments have been given anonymous, so it is possible that there could be some comments in my data that have been written by adults. I reflect the concepts in the feedback comments on the curriculum and three textbook and exercise book series used in fourth and fifth grade. Results and conclusions. Six-graders use textual concepts when giving peer feedback on each other's stories. There are 16 different textual concepts in my data and they are mentioned 109 times. The most used concept is a story (tarina). One peer feedback comment can have many targets and there can be various textual concepts in it. The target in a six-graders feedback comment is often related to the plot (juoni) and the beginning (alku) and the ending (loppu) of a story. A six-grader can analyse a story's chain of events and understand the chronology of a story. The use of textual concepts specifies and deepens the meaning of feedback to the writer of the story. It also reveals how the feedback's giver can use textual concepts they have learned. Reader's evaluative experience starts dialogue between the writer and the reader which completes the feedback comment. This lifts the writer's voice to the center and on the focus which can lead to the writer's voice growing stronger. All in all, peer feedback in writing is useful not only to the receiver but also the giver.