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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007A19WillsA.19: Reperceiving Peer Review Listed under the Area Cluster “Practices of Teaching Writing,” this session drew an overflow crowd of 90 attendees. This session delivered current empirical research, pedagogical trends, and a smattering of teaching theory. Joanna Wolfe of the University of Louisville replaced the chair listed on the program. Davida Charney: “How and How Helpfully Do Peers Comment on Student Writing?” Charney began her session with a disclaimer that some audience members might find her study on “reciprocal evaluation” unorthodox. The process is based on three steps in the student peer review process; then each author’s work is reviewed by six randomly assigned peer reviewers. The author replies to each peer reviewer, and the six peer reviewers assign a numerical rating to each draft they read. The numerical grades from each of the six peer reviewers are averaged for a final grade using a computerized program. The instructor does not grade each assignment; rather, each student’s grade is determined by the average of six peer reviews. The benefit of the “reciprocal evaluation” grading process is that it reduces teacher effort. Still, Charney mentioned these concerns she found in her study:
Further, Charney reported that her study (111n) found these results: “students like praise” and “writing instructors are far more likely to give praise than students” while concentrating on global writing issues. Ultimately, Charney’s “reciprocal evaluation” study attempts to show how peer review can be used to teach students responsibility for the classroom experience and their learning. Necia Werner: “Genre, Ideology, and Values: Analysis of a Scientific Peer Review Controversy.” As the session title says, Werner primarily reviewed an ongoing scientific peer review controversy regarding peer-reviewed Psychology journals. Werner began by easily establishing her professional ethos by calling herself a “teacher of professional and technical writing,” theorized in Caroline R. Miller’s genre as social action. In a nutshell, according to Werner, researchers Peters and Ceci created an experiment in which they resubmitted 12 already peer reviewed and published journal articles to the same journal 18-32 months later, except that the articles were now submitted using low prestige schools and unknown writers with no status in the field. Only one of 12 previously published articles was accepted by the same journal for publication when submitted with low status institutional affiliation or authors. The rejected articles (formerly worthy of being published) were rejected on the grounds of poor methodology or writing. At the end of her session, Werner posed a question about peer review in composition and rhetoric journals. Werner asked the audience: to what degree are articles selected on the writer’s institutional prestige and/or big name recognition rather than scholarly rigor and innovation? Her review of Peters and Ceci seem to make the sobering argument that the peer review process and the ultimate publishing of scholarly articles across all fields may have more to do with perceived prestige factors than recognition of cutting edge scholarship by peer reviewers. At the question and answer session, an audience member stated, “It is incredible to me that we still pretend that this process [of peer review of journal articles] is an objective and scientific process.” While not related directly to peer review, a comparison was drawn to the Alan Sokol Physics scandal. Christine Neuwirth: “Peer Review: Differences in Student and Professional Strategies.” Neuwirth’s presentation reported on the results from a peer review study (12n) that analyzed comments between more experienced writers (MEW) and less experienced writers (LEW). Neuwrith theorized her view of peer review as reflective practice that with the “use of oral interaction may help writers from being stuck in low level details of text.” The MEWs in the study had records of publication or jobs in English programs as professors. The LEWs were undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University. Writing and essay improvement rates were assessed by using the Journal of Educational Psychology rating scale. MEWs were found to spend more time thinking about audience and purpose. There was also a correlation between the number of “challenges” to a writer’s work and the improvement in quality of that writing. Comments? |