TEACHERS’ IMPLEMENTATION OF PEER ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES IN MALAYSIAN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Abstract

Peer assessment promotes collaboration, communication, independent and reflective thinking. However, implementing peer assessment in an examination-orientated education system is challenging. Teachers’ beliefs, capabilities and lack of suitable training limit implementation of these strategies in the classroom. Thus, teachers need professional development programmes to guide them to implement peer assessment. The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers implement selected peer assessment strategies during a Collaborative Professional Development Programme (CPDP). CPDP is an expert-teacher collaboration model. The nature of the CPDP was long-term, collaborative and provided teachers with autonomy. For this study, two primary school science teachers participated. Using classroom observations and interviews, data was elicited about teachers’ implementation of certain peer assessment strategies. Using constant comparative analysis, the findings revealed three aspects of teachers’ practice that prevented them for successfully implement the peer assessment strategies: teachers did not sufficiently prepare resources, dominated classroom discourse and were more concerned with the product, not the process. The study implies that implementation of peer assessment strategies through professional development programmes should be more comprehensive to include teachers’ technological knowledge and skills, how teachers evoke students’ awareness of the process and using problems as teachable moments. Moreover, professional programme developers should consider ways of reducing teachers’ tensions between learning and examination when designing professional development programmes