Attitudes towards peer assessment: a comparison of the perspectives of pre‐service and in‐service teachers

Abstract

In recent years, peer assessment has been increasingly used as an alternative method of assessment in classrooms. The study described in this paper employed a 13‐item Likert‐scale instrument to evaluate participants’ attitudes towards both general (seven items) and online peer assessment (six items). A sample of 280 pre‐service teachers and 108 in‐service teachers from northern Taiwan participated in the study. A difference in attitude was found between pre‐service and in‐service teachers, because the latter viewed peer assessment as a learning aid. Our results also showed that male pre‐service teachers had more positive attitudes towards peer assessment in general; male in‐service teachers also liked the online approach more than did their female counterparts. Item‐by‐item analyses have been conducted in order to explore both the differences in attitude between pre‐service and in‐service teachers and to identify any gender effects.

Acknowledgements

Funding of this research work is supported by the National Science Council (grant numbers NSC 92‐2524‐S‐009‐003 and NSC 93‐2524‐S‐009‐003), Taiwan, and the Ministry of Education, Taiwan (grant number E020‐90B858). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Computers in Education 2003 (ICCE 2003), Hong Kong.