Evaluating the alignment of self, peer and lecture assessment in an Aotearoa New Zealand pre-service teacher education course

Abstract

The ability to reflect and self-assess are essential attributes for graduates to develop during their education. At many tertiary institutions, peer and lecturer-assessment contribute to summative assessment, but self-assessment, whilst recommended for development, does not. In order to make a case for the inclusion of self-assessment as a summative assessment task its reliability needs to be analysed, tested and established. This paper reports a study comparing the alignment of self, peer and lecturer-assessment of 34 pre-service teacher-education students and their lecturer. Students annotated a teaching artefact evidencing their attainment of an Aotearoa New Zealand Graduating Teacher Standard. Peer groups of students and their lecturer also assessed the annotated artefacts using the same collaboratively constructed assessment rubric and feedback sheet. While 59% of self, peer and lecturer-assessments fully aligned, in the remaining 41% many of the participants awarded lower grades to their achievement, indicating less confidence concerning their attainment than their peers and lecturer did. Emerging themes from the annotations of those students whose self-ratings were lower than those of their peers and/or the lecturer indicate a need for further research focussed on the potential influence of self-efficacy and cultural responsiveness on the reliability of self-assessment.