AN INTRODUCTION TO EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH METHODS

Refining The Focus For Research And Formulating A Research Question
In his final report, he discussed how he went about answering his research questions. He set
out his research design (see Chapter 4) and explained how he would collect and analyse
data.
This report provides evidence of Owain making judgements by demonstrating the ability
to integrate knowledge and handle complexity, and formulate judgements with incomplete
data.
His written report communicated his conclusions, underpinning knowledge and rationale
to other teachers and colleagues in his placement school. Although he worked with a
university-based tutor and school-based mentor, he did undertake the study in a manner
that was largely self-directed or autonomous. Owain’s final summary is set out in Box 2.5.
Box 1.6
This case study found that students’ perceptions of peer-assessment encompassed
a broad range of positive and negative aspects, depending on the individual, that
were largely consistent with those documented in the literature. A key issue for
some students was their unfamiliarity with peer-assessment and consequent
difficulty in carrying out the protocol, which led them to perceive it as ineffective.
To some extent this may explain the findings regarding the students’ interactions
when engaged in peer-assessment. These were characterised by their briefness
and limited exchange of formative verbal feedback. The evidence regarding
the relationship between students’ perceptions of their understanding and the
understanding they demonstrate is limited by the validity of the measures used
and the complexities of performing such a comparison.
While these conclusions have validity in the ecological and methodological
context of the present study, caution should be taken in generalisation, given
I) the peer-assessment protocol’s specificity and II) the composition, age and
attainment range of the class. There are many different ways of implementing
peer-assessment and an even larger suite of AfL strategies. My findings should
thus be used as a tentative indicator for how students might respond, given
a sufficient degree of similarity to the research context described here. Next
steps in this research area could be to investigate differences in perceptions
and interactions between different groups of students, introduce further
methods of formative assessment and investigate how they are received or
begin to consider how the protocol employed could be modified to increase
its effectiveness, approaching the enquiry as action research.
The aim of this study was to investigate how peer-assessment is viewed and
enacted by students,
breaking from the tendency of writings on assessment
to focus on the teacher’s role [Brookhart, 2001]. However, in my own role
as a teacher, the experience of teaching a peer-assessment episode has been
valuable for informing my practice. I have learned that the exercise may be
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