Epistemic positioning and frameworks for participation: Learning to assess objects of craft in teacher education

Abstract

This study investigates peer assessment in teacher education with a focus on the interactive organisation of such activities. As part of teacher education, peer assessment is not only used in teaching and learning of subject matter, but can also serve as a learning exercise where assessment competences are taught and attended to. In peer assessment, students engage in educational activities under conditions that differ from other classroom interaction: while participating in the activities as students, they are at the same time involved in teaching and assessing their peers — activities commonly associated with teachers. Studying this kind of educational activity places a focus on participation and interactional positions: to what extent are students able to participate in this kind of activity as teachers and in what ways do they orient towards their positions as students? The analyses show a multi-dimensional interactive organisation with both dynamic and static components. Interactional arrangements with shifting participation frameworks and changing interactive positions are at work simultaneously as a more stable organisational pattern related to educational interaction.