Interplay between students’ perceived utility, accountability, self-efficacy, and social awareness when engaged with peer feedback: A qualitative interpretation

Peer feedback is aligned to assessment-as-learning (AaL) by giving students opportunities to develop self-evaluation and self-reflection skills. Existing studies focused mainly on using peer feedback in higher education as part of instructional design to support learning. Nonetheless, peer feedback is a dynamic process where students' perceptions of feedback might reduce the effectiveness of peer feedback in facilitating learning. This study employed a multi-dimensional concept of feedback orientation (Yang & Yang, 2018) to examine interplays between students' perceptions of peer feedback usefulness (utility), responsibility for using peer feedback (accountability), perceived abilities to use peer feedback (self-efficacy), and perception of peers’ opinions of themselves (social awareness). Focus groups with students at a faculty of education at a university in Hong Kong offered narratives of peer feedback experiences. Thematic analysis derived three major themes, each focusing on one dimension of peer feedback orientation except that accountability and self-efficacy were merged into one theme (both stemming from students' perceived usefulness of peer feedback and awareness of peers’ opinions of themselves). Examination of how teacher-guided and student-initiated peer feedback practices interacts suggested the four dimensions are interconnected. Strategies were suggested to establish a supportive peer feedback culture by accommodating students' development of adaptive feedback orientation to maximise learning. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Zi Yan and Lan Yang; individual chapters, the contributors.