A questionnaire to assess students’ beliefs about peer-feedback

ABSTRACT

Research into students’ peer-feedback beliefs varies both thematically and in approaches and outcomes. This study aimed to develop a questionnaire to measure students’ beliefs about peer-feedback. Based on the themes in the literature four scales were conceptualised. In separate exploratory (N = 219) and confirmatory (N = 121) studies, the structure of the questionnaire was explored and tested. These analyses confirmed the a priori conceptualised four scales: (1) students’ valuation of peer-feedback as an instructional method, (2) students’ confidence in the quality and helpfulness of the feedback they provide to a peer, (3) students’ confidence in the quality and helpfulness of the feedback they receive from their peers and (4) the extent to which students regard peer-feedback as an important skill. The value of this Beliefs about Peer-Feedback Questionnaire (BPFQ) is discussed both in terms of future research and the practical insights it may offer higher education teaching staff.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer-feedback
• peer-assessment
• peer-review
• student beliefs
• questionnaire

Acknowledgments

We thank Kim Stroet for facilitating data collection and Marjo de Graauw for data collection in her class and for fruitful brainstorm sessions on students’ peer-feedback beliefs. Also, we would like to thank Kirsten Ran for her help with the questionnaires. Finally, thanks go out to Benjamin Telkamp for his assistance with data analyses and for inspiring confidence to use the R language.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Statement on Open Data

The anonymised data and syntaxes are accessible via the following link: https://osf.io/ja27g

Notes

1. For a more details with respect to the exploratory and confirmatory analyses, please see Huisman (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bart Huisman

Bart Huisman obtained his MSc in social psychology in 2013 at Leiden University and his PhD in 2018 at Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching (ICLON), The Netherlands. His primary research interest is peer feedback in higher education.

Nadira Saab

Nadira Saab is Assistant Professor at Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching (ICLON), The Netherlands. Her research interests involve the impact of powerful and innovative learning methods and approaches on learning processes and learning results, such as collaborative learning, technology enhanced learning, (formative) assessment and motivation.

Jan Van Driel

Jan Van Driel is professor of Science Education and Associate Dean-Research at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Australia. He obtained his PhD from Utrecht University (1990), The Netherlands and was professor of Science Education at Leiden University, the Netherlands (2006-2016) before he moved to Australia. His research has a focus on teacher knowledge and beliefs and teacher learning in the context of pre-service teacher education and educational innovations. He has published his research across the domains of science education, teacher education and higher education.

Paul Van Den Broek

Paul Van Den Broek is professor in Cognitive and Neurobiological Foundations of Learning and Teaching at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and director of the Brain and Education Lab. He obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago (1985), and was professor at the University of Kentucky (1985-1987) and the University of Minnesota (1987-2008) before moving to the Netherlands. His research interests center around reading, learning from texts, and mathematics. With his colleagues, he investigates the cognitive and neurological processes that underlie these activities –both when they succeed and when the fail-, and the development of these processes in children and adults. They also develop and test methods for improving reading comprehension and reading skills in struggling readers. http://www.brainandeducationlab.nl