Knowledge convergence among pre-service mathematics teachers through online reciprocal peer feedback

This research focused on pre-service mathematics teachers’ sharing of knowledge through reciprocal peer feedback. In this study, pre-service teachers were divided into groups of five and engaged in an online reciprocal peer feedback activity. Specifically, after creating an individual concept map indicating high school students’ possible solutions to an algebra problem, pre-service teachers shared their individual maps with team members and engaged in online discussion, commenting on the concept maps of other group members and responding to peers’ feedback. Similarities in team members’ knowledge representations before and after this peer feedback activity were compared in order to analyze their knowledge convergence. It was found that a team member’s knowledge was more likely to match that of other team members after the online reciprocal peer feedback activity. Qualitative analysis was also conducted in order to explore the possible influence of a team’s interaction process on members’ knowledge convergence. It was also found that, after engaging in this peer feedback process, pre-service teachers demonstrated greater improvement in their convergence of concepts relating to problem-solving strategies than in the concepts representing problem context and domains