The "Why's" of Peer Review

By Katelyn Fish

When I was in high school, we occasionally were given other student’s papers to read and review a day or two before final drafts were due. Unfortunately, we really lacked the tools to do so in a way that was meaningful. I usually just got a circled paragraph that said “I like this part” and a few random question marks scattered across the page; not knowing any better, I tended to give the same back. We were never given time to explain our random markings. Papers were just handed back and then we moved on. It wasn’t until I was a few years into college that I really started to understand how beneficial peer review could be—and that was because I found a few people who I could count on to give me useful feedback.

Now, as a preservice teacher, I know that I want to include peer review in my classroom. However, I refuse to allow peer review time to be wasted time, like it was for me. In a later blog post, I will discuss some techniques for peer review—but for today, let’s try and determine why peer review is important and what it can do for students.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF PEER REVIEW?

1.     Students can improve their writing with peer review more than they can on their own.

It is often helpful to get a second set of eyes on one’s writing in order to catch errors that have become invisible to the author, but peer review does more than help students edit. When students know that their work will be read by more than just their teacher, they tend to consider rhetorical choices more seriously. Capitalize on this. Knowing that their writing will be “read in the same way they have heard published writing read can reinforce students’ sense of authorship, that they are writing to communicate and must consider how their decisions effect readers” (Graff 86).

Additionally, when students can sit and conference together about their work, they have the opportunity to ask and answer questions about the text. “Peer review allows students to clarify their own ideas as they explain them to classmates and as they formulate questions about their classmates’ writing” (SU). And questioning a peer’s paper can help both the writer AND the reader, as the questioner considers how the questions they are asking fit into the context of their own paper. “Studies have shown that even strong writers benefit from the process of peer review: students report that they learn as much or more from identifying and articulating weaknesses in a peer’s paper as from incorporating peers’ feedback into their own work” (SU).

While reviewing a peer’s paper, students gain ideas to apply to their own writing and revision. Reviewing a peer’s paper forces the student to take on a new perspective. They are no longer a writer, but are a reader or grader—especially if they are supplied with a peer review rubric and have to evaluate the writing from the teacher’s perspective. “By providing feedback to peers, students often begin to think more flexibly about their own writing. For example, by taking the grader’s perspective, a student might start to better understand that the writer isn’t always successful in communicating something clearly. This experience may then promote the student’s ability to take the grader’s perspective when they review their own work before submitting it for a grade”  (Hoogendoorn). An additional advantage here is that students can be exposed to a variety of ideas and interests. In one peer review group, a research reported that “the diverse topics exposed students to research outside their respective fields and gave them an appreciation for the commonalities and topic-specific aspects of effective . . . writing” (Liu et al).

2.     Students learn how to take (and give) criticism in a healthy way.

“Peer-review can build comfort and normalcy around receiving constructive feedback” (Hoogendoorn). Students tend to be hesitant to critique the work of their peers—especially in a secondary school classroom setting, where their peers are potentially their friends. Knowing this, it makes sense that students would rather say “looks good!” or “nice work!” in response to a peer’s paper rather than “your thesis makes zero sense” or “you misspelled like 4 words.” Students need to be contextually situated in a space where critique is allowed, but first they need to understand their role as peer reviewers. If you want your students to serve as more than spell-check machines, then they need to be functioning in the role of a reader and responding to the text as such. Teachers should emphasize “that readers are making sense of the essays, not fixing them” (Graff 83). This allows students to “engage in authentic writing to master the complex decisions authors must confront when they compose for real audiences. That decision making could benefit most from ‘real’ reader feedback” (Graff 81).  They can learn how to “put a name on the problem area and give some sort of advice about what to do” (Christenbury & Lindblom 307).

3.     Students experience a connected classroom culture.

It is difficult for students to be involved in a classroom learning community if they never share their writing with each other. With effective peer review, “gone is the isolation of one person writing his or her draft and never hearing or seeing what other students are doing” (Christenbury & Lindblom 307). Peer review also gives students an opportunity to share their ideas and thus learn from each other. As they do so, they will be exposed to more ideas and learn together how to navigate new genres of writing. Too often students only see the work of professional, published authors—but sometimes it may be more effective to see the range of work being produced by peers. “Because students often learn writing skills in English class, at least in high school, their models for ‘good writing’ might be entirely general or ill-suited to your class. Peer review gives them a communal space to explore writing in the disciplines” (SU).

4.     Teachers aren’t the only ones giving feedback.

Consider the sheer quantity of reading one teacher must do if they want to give students feedback on every piece of writing they produce. It’s simply not an effective use of time. “If a teacher is able to respond to every piece of writing his or her students write, then that teacher is possible not assignment enough writing. To be effective writing teacher, we must enlist others to respond to student writing” (Christenbury & Lindblom 308). By teaching students how to give quality feedback, some of that heavy load is taken off of the teacher. The teacher can “feel confident that with proper preparations students can share what they are working on and get feedback from other readers, not just the teacher. It’s a practical solution that not only has a sound pedagogical basis but that may help to save a committed writing teacher’s sanity” (308).

Peer review—that is, effective peer review— helps both teacher and students. What benefits have you found peer review to have in your classroom? And what struggles have you encountered? Let me know in the comments below!

  

Sources 

“Benefits of Peer Review.” Southwestern University. https://www.southwestern.edu/offices/writing/faculty-resources-for-writing-instruction/peer-review/benefits-of-peer-review/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2018.

Christenbury, Leila, and Ken Lindblom. Making the Journey: Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts. Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2016.

Graff, Nelson. “Approaching Authentic Peer Review.” The English Journal, vol. 98, no. 5, 2009, pp. 81–87. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40503303.

Hoogendoorn, Claire. “The Benefits of Peer Review.” Open Lab at City Tech, 26 May 2015. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/writingacrossthecurriculum/2015/05/26/the-benefits-of-peer-review/.

Liu, Jianguo, Dawn Thorndike Pysarchik, William W. Taylor. “Peer Review in the Classroom.” BioScience, Vol 52, Issue 9, 1 September 2002, pp. 824–829, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/52/9/824/248769.