Assessing students’ peer feedback literacy in writing: scale development and validation

Abstract

Peer feedback activities are characterized by peers performing both roles of feedback provider and receiver, and peers are found to benefit from both roles. However, in current feedback literacy studies, the emphasis has been overwhelmingly given to students’ understandings, capacities and dispositions in receiving feedback, and existing student feedback literacy scales measure only the receiving side of feedback literacy. Students learn from providing and what they provide fundamentally shapes what others receive. This study conceptualizes peer feedback literacy as students’ capacities and attitudes in providing and receiving peer feedback, and developed and validated a peer feedback literacy scale on the basis of responses from 474 Chinese university students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, and four factors emerged: feedback-related knowledge and abilities, cooperative learning ability, appreciation of peer feedback, and willingness to participate. The resulting scale showed good psychometric properties and revealed some surprising associations with student major, year and amount of prior experience.