Voices in the Feminine - Digital Delights

At the root of the dissension over peer grading is the conflicting view on how people learn. One of Rees’ comments within the essay “Professors in the trenches tend to hold their monopoly on evaluating their students’ work dearly, since it helps them control the classroom better by reinforcing their power and expertise,” supports a cognitive and instructor-focused learning orientation. The concept of peer review, which leaves for the most part the instructor out of the equation, aligns with the social constructivist learning orientation. There is strong support in constructivist theories for the peer review which is grounded in student-centered learning where students learn as much from the review process itself as from the final grade on an assignment.

A paper on peer review published in 2007 described how the idea of peer review is embedded in the philosophies of learning theorists. The authors call out Vygotsky and his beliefs that learning occurs in, and is mediated by, social interaction. Authors do present the downsides of the peer review process, though at the conclusion of their research they determined that students involved in peer review perform better academically than peers graded only by their instructors (Lu & Bol, 2007).