Student performance and attitudes under formative evaluation by teacher, self and peer evaluators

This study investigated the effects of formative evaluation conducted by teacher, self and peer evaluators on the performance and attitudes of 133 preservice teachers enrolled in six sections of an undergraduate technology-integration course.; The study took place over a five-week period. Two sections of the course were randomly assigned to each of the three treatments, (teacher, self, and peer evaluation). Two teachers, trained by the researcher, taught the six sections. All sections completed the same coursework from weeks 1 through 3, during which time each student developed a technology-integrated lesson plan. In week 4, students received evaluation and feedback on their lesson plans from the teacher, the student him/herself, or an anonymous peer. Students then revised their draft plans based on the evaluation and feedback and submitted the final version in week 5. A knowledge test and an attitude survey were administered to all students in week 5.; Students in all three treatments improved their lesson plans significantly from the draft version to the final version. The amount of improvement did not differ significantly across the three treatments. The overall mean scores assigned to the draft lesson plans by the self and peer evaluators were significantly higher than those assigned subsequently by the researcher, revealing a pattern by the self and peer evaluators to score their work more favorably than the researcher scored it. The self-evaluators also scored their own draft plans significantly higher than the peer evaluators scored their peers' plans.; Posttest scores were significantly higher than the pretest scores for each of the three groups on the 10-item knowledge measure. In addition, an evaluation-type-by-test-occasion interaction revealed that the peer-evaluation students showed significantly greater improvement from pretest to posttest than the self-evaluation students. Students had positive attitudes toward all three types of evaluation. Students under teacher evaluation had the most favorable attitudes, significantly more positive than students under peer evaluation.; Training and practice provided to the self- and peer-evaluation groups on use of the evaluation rubric is credited with enabling them to produce final lesson plans similar in quality to those of the teacher-evaluation group.