Fostering pre-service teachers' self-regulated learning through self- and peer assessment of wiki projects

Abstract

This study investigates whether self-regulated learning of pre-service early-childhood teachers is a viable pedagogy to improve the quality of their wiki-based projects. A total of 76 early-childhood pre-service teachers in their first year of study at a teacher training institute in Hong Kong participated in this study. The tasks involved were based on seven principles for supporting and developing self-regulated learning. The pre-service teachers formed groups to apply the skills and knowledge that were taught by the author by creating educational wiki sites for young children to learn about a topic of their choice. This was then followed by preliminary-self-assessment, class presentations of the wiki projects, peer assessment, revision of the projects and final-self-assessment. Indeed, the pre-service teachers' involvement in assessing wiki projects perfectly aligns with the collaborative spirit of authoring wiki projects.Quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire and the self- and peer assessment reports, whilst qualitative data were collected from a focus group held with six of the students. It is noteworthy that the students tended to be more demanding of themselves than of their classmates, as shown by a significant difference between preliminary-self-assessment and peer assessment in the scores for three out of four criteria (p value = 0.011). The mean for preliminary-self-made video was rated the lowest by preliminary-self-assessment but it was rated the highest by peers. Since the p-value is 0.024, which is less than 0.05, this difference is significant. The focus-group participants thought their peers and the teacher provided helpful feedback, but did not find the self-assessment particularly useful. Although the data from the questionnaires and focus groups show that the pre-service teachers considered formative assessment approaches helpful, and all the mean final-self-assessment scores improved, the differences between preliminary-self-assessment and final-self-assessment were not significant. The research findings show that the students were active wiki creators and assessors and yet they did not have enough confidence in themselves.