Using peer and teacher-student exemplar dialogues to unpack assessment standards: challenges and possibilities

Abstract

Dialogic use of exemplars is effective in developing student understanding of assessment standards. However, limited studies have investigated how exemplar dialogues are conducted in the post-secondary context. To fill the gap, this teacher-research explores the characteristics of peer and teacher–student exemplar talk in three post-secondary classrooms and the challenges in the dialogic process. The participants involved 69 first-year post-secondary students, a critical friend and a teacher-researcher. Data analysis on selected dialogue excerpts, an open-ended survey, focus group interviews with the students, critical friend’s commentary and a teacher-researcher reflective journal indicated two major issues: (i) students’ lack of capacities to resolve socio-cognitive conflict in the peer dialogue; (ii) the dilemma of addressing students’ immediate assessment needs and developing their long-term evaluative judgements in the teacher–student dialogue. Recommendations are made to tackle the challenges and to orchestrate productive exemplar dialogues.

Keywords:

• Exemplars
• peer dialogue
• teacher–student dialogue
• challenges

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Professor David Carless and Dr Rola Ajjawi and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the earlier drafts of this manuscript.