Peer assessment: praise or blame? : A study of students feelings for peer assessment in the subject Swedish

The purpose of this study has been to explore how a class of year 8 students from a school in the middle region of Sweden experience peer assessment on written assignments in the Swedish subject as well as their feelings towards peer assessment and their opinion of how well it works as a tool for learning. To answer this question an observation of a peer assessment session concerning a debate article was conducted. This was followed up by a focus group interview with five students during which peer assessment was thoroughly discussed. The purpose of the observation was for the researcher to gain insight into how the class worked with peer assessment. It also served as a foundation for the interview. The study shows that the students see many benefits with peer assessment, mainly, they appreciate giving response. Receiving responce was often viewed as a difficulty, both as the receiver and giver as the students wanted to avoid hurting others. They also felt that they were unable to be completely honest to their peers and that were sometimes hard to rely on the feedback they got. The students asked for more exercises in peer assessment, mainly in the earlier years, in order to gain the positive effects described by the literature.