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The Effectiveness of Peer Learning in a Vocational Educational Setting
Status
Completed: 4 December 2012
Project Details
A project completed in 2012, undertaken by Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, to investigate peer learning processes by students across four pre-trade programmes (Carpentry, Painting and Decoration, Electrical, and Welding) at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT).
Aims:
The main aims of the project were to:
- create an awareness of peer learning amongst students and educators
- recommend pre-requisites for peer learning
- provide recommendations for favourable conditions in which peer learning can be effective
- provide teaching and learning strategies for peer learning
- improve teaching and learning in a classroom environment.
Methodology:
The project used a mixed method approach involving:
- a review of the literature
- collection of preintervention data, in the form of video footage of practical/classroom learning activities
- workshops which were conducted to help students improve peer learning strategies
- collection of post-intervention data/video
- comparison of the pre- and post- intervention data to find out whether the peer learning workshops were effective in improving students peer learning practice.
Team
![ara](/assets/Organisation-logos/ara__FillWzI1MCwyNTBd.png)
Flip Leijten
Project Leader
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (now Ara institute of Canterbury)![ara](/assets/Organisation-logos/ara__FillWzI1MCwyNTBd.png)
Selena Chan
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (now Ara Institute of Canterbury)Status
Funding
$10,000.00 (excl GST)
Key Findings
The key findings from the project included:
- Examination of recordings from post-intervention group discussions indicated an increase in feedback quality.
- Data analysis of recordings illustrated improved richness of interactions in the post-intervention groups.
- Examination of peer learning interactions indicate most groups (post-intervention) used effective peer feedback strategies, in turn, leading to an acceleration in students’ skill acquisition.
- The recordings provide examples of a reconfiguration in motivational dialogue between students.
- The study also found that not all students fit into a peer learning environment. This is because peer learning requires the application of basic communicative, conflict management and attitudinal skills.
- The study found providing quality intervention workshops to recommend peer learning to students to be relevant and important.
- Therefore, a recommended sequence to use as a guideline for helping trades tutors to implement peer learning with their students, is provided. The guidelines are a composite of the principles presented in the literature review and the findings from this project.
Key Recommendations
The key recommendations from the project were the following guidelines which provide a list of structured strategies for teachers to introduce peer learning activities into workshop-based practical learning activities and class-room based theory learning activities:
Tutors’ role in introducing peer learning | During the first 3 weeks set aside training sessions to discuss and participate in learning activities to support the following principles: basic communicative, conflict management, and attitudinal skills; keep disagreements civil and unheated and protect minority opinion; and build mutual respect for and trust and confidence in one another.
Feedback cycle | Follow the above by providing students with a session to introduce the feedback cycle – explain and practise the process of feed-back, feed forward and feed-up. The above learning session supports the student’s ability to be aware of and use/apply feedback in future workshop and classroom learning activities.
Incorporate peer learning as an integral component of a curriculum | Incorporate peer learning as an integral component of a curriculum, by: creating a conducive learning environment; making sure the entire group experiences ‘positive interdependence’; encouraging face-to-face interaction and group processing of learning; and explaining and supporting the importance of individual and group accountability.
A research report prepared by Flip Leijten and Selena Chan.
(PDF, 875 KB, 27-pages).
- 6 December 2012