Peer assessment as an instructional leadership practice in the university: conceptualisation, enactment, affordances and constraints

A research report submitted to the Wits School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Education in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. January, 2017.This study explores how lecturers, as instructional leaders, conceptualised and enacted peer assessment in the courses they teach. The study also explores affordances and constraints of peer assessment to teaching and learning at the university level. Qualitative case study design was employed in this study. Five lecturers from one University in South Africa across different disciplines in School of Education, participated. Data was collected through an in-depth semi-structured interview with each case lecturer. Findings of this study revealed that peer assessment was conceptualised by the lecturers as both assessment for learning and as an opportunity to develop in student-teachers skills of assessment. Three different approaches to the enactment of peer assessment emerged. These are: individual-written work peer assessment; group-oral presentation peer assessment; and group-written work peer assessment. Various teaching and learning affordances of peer assessment were revealed, as well as constraints on its effective implementation, such as: students’ incompetence in assessment; issues of bias in assigning marks to peers; and increasing demand by the lecturers in terms of their workload. Implications of these findings for the theory, practice and policy on assessment at University level were discussed. Keywords Affordances, Conceptualisation, Constraints, Enactment, Peer assessment, South Africa, University levelLG201