Peer critique as a signature pedagogy in writing studies

Writing pedagogies and the puzzle of arts and humanities

In the USA, postsecondary writing courses are increasingly housed in the discipline of writing studies, which has emerged out of composition and rhetoric scholarship in the past 50 years. Writing courses have historically and conventionally been understood and defined as fundamental gateway courses that develop general academic literacy skills, as opposed to discipline-specific writing courses. However, Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle’s article “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’” argues for a disciplinary approach to both claiming and redesigning the goals and purposes of writing courses in higher education. Downs and Wardle (2007) acknowledge that “some general features of writing are shared across disciplines” but that “these shared features are realized differently within different academic disciplines, courses, and even assignments” (p. 556). They conclude that it is a “category mistake” to misunderstand the purpose of first-year writing as preparing students for all of their postsecondary writing (Downs and Wardle, 2007: 556). Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Downs (2015) have continued this work in Naming What We Know—Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies, which examines 37 core principles of the discipline.

Writing studies’ place within both English and a larger arts and humanities context is contentious. The teaching of writing in higher education is simultaneously one of the least prestigious and most fundamental activities of institutions of higher education. Writing courses, often considered “service courses,” are most often housed in English departments built by and for tenured faculty, a majority of whom are literature and/or creative writing specialists rather than writing studies specialists. English as an umbrella discipline itself demonstrates this clearly: literary analysis and creative writing are strikingly different from the research-based academic writing usually taught in composition classrooms. Increasingly, though, the study of writing and its teaching has gained ground in its battle to differentiate itself as a discipline from literary analysis and creative writing. Many of those who consider themselves teachers and scholars in writing studies may be wary of associating its pedagogies with those of the arts and humanities.

Focusing on student learning, however, is a way to bridge category and disciplinary turf battles. The habits of mind developed by any particular discipline overlap with others; the beliefs, values, and attitudes cultivated by a particular pedagogy may not be isolated to one discipline. Kristine Hanson’s (2012) critique of the “Framework” addresses this overlap: “habits of mind can also be developed in many other ways—studying science, for example, or participating in sports, art, music, dance, scouting, or 4-H” (p. 541). Hanson’s point is that the “habits of mind” do not belong only to a single discipline—first-year writing is not the only place where creativity, engagement, persistence, or metacognition are fostered. Instead, habits of mind may be a way to foster understanding and collaboration between and among the many parts of English as well as in its larger arts and humanities’ context.

“Surface structures”: What is peer critique in writing studies?

Peer critique in writing classrooms has many names—peer review, writing groups, and workshop among them. Armstrong and Paulson (2008) define peer review as “an activity that is more focused on holistic concerns, rhetorical issues, and issues of meaning and audience appropriateness” (pp. 400–401). In general, students provide for critique individually authored essays that are written for a variety of rhetorical purposes (e.g. analysis, synthesis, review, or argument). Students bring drafts of essays and work with their classmates who have completed the same assignment. Usually student authors prepare a request for feedback and work in small groups, taking turns responding to each other’s work. Peer review’s “surface structures,” or its “concrete, operational acts” (Shulman, 2005: 54), are best defined by its goals for student learning, which are two-fold: The primary goals is for students get to feedback from peers on a specific writing task, usually a draft of an essay prior to its due date to be submitted for feedback or assessment from the instructor. The secondary learning goal of peer critique is for students to develop the practice of giving feedback to others. They listen to multiple approaches to completing the assignment and thereby develop their critical perspective as a reader and writer. As a result of both giving and receiving feedback, they begin to develop self-knowledge of their critical reading and writing skills.

Scaffolded peer critique processes: From non-degree credit courses to core

Both the teaching of and the learning goals for peer review vary depending on the skill level of the students and the expectations of the curriculum. The learning goals for peer critique in a non-degree-credit writing class are about development: student authors need to learn that sharing writing with others is part of the academic writing process, that their feedback is often dependent on their ability to request it (via self-assessment), and that they have a responsibility to both receive as well as evaluate the feedback they are given by their peers. In their role as peer reviewers, the goal is for them to learn that they are able to recognize strengths and weaknesses in their peers’ writing and to begin learning how to give useful feedback. In a degree-credit or “core” writing course (one that would fulfill a postsecondary institution’s writing requirement, for example), the learning goals for student authors and peer reviewers are much more advanced. As student authors are completing what may be their final writing course, they are learning that critique is part of a writing process that all writers in all disciplines do, that asking for feedback is a skill unto itself that effective writers employ, and that peer critique is an essential skill, part of their future success in academic writing. As peer critiquers in such a class, students are expected to provide effective feedback to peer writers, apply critical reading of peer’s writing to their own writing, become increasingly more autonomous authors of their own work, use and apply the language of the discipline to their reviews, and master the ability to offer an evidence-based critique of peer work that goes beyond their opinion. In other words, the learning goals for the activity are similar, but expectations for increasing depth and degree of independence and competence scale up with each course. The learning outcomes for the curriculum also help illustrate this: in the non-degree-credit writing class at my institution, the University of Wisconsin Colleges, learning outcomes for peer review state that students “develop a basic ability to work collaboratively by identifying and using appropriate resources for feedback; using reader feedback to shape revision; and, learning to provide feedback as a reader to other writers” (“First-Year Writing Learning Outcomes and Competencies,” 2014); whereas the learning outcomes in the core required-writing course are for students to “Demonstrate proficiency in working collaboratively to use appropriate resources for feedback; critically use reader feedback to shape revision; and provide effective feedback as a reader to other writers.” While parallel, the learning outcomes differ in depth, in their requirement for critical thinking, and the distinction between “developing a basic ability” and “demonstrating a critical proficiency,” all of which are matured through peer critique.

The disparity in learning goals has important implications for peer critique as a pedagogy. Peer review exists as a common pedagogy of the discipline; however, it needs to be taught, facilitated, supported, and assessed in the context of the curriculum and its learning outcomes. In non-degree-credit courses, peer review requires modeling, perhaps with a low-stakes practice session on a shared reading, detailed heuristics, and direction about the roles of student authors, as well as peer reviewers. During the actual class activity, instructors often zip from one side of the classroom to the other answering questions, checking on groups that are quiet or who have stalled, providing an additional perspective when groups have conflicting ideas and advice. While teachers in core writing classes may still rely on modeling and instructor support at the beginning, there is less scaffolding and support of the activity by design—by the end of the course, students should be competent and independent authors and reviewers. Assessing student learning related to peer review also falls on a spectrum aligned with the learning outcomes. While most writing instructors provide credit through participating in a process (not product) when it comes to peer review, if it is a learning outcome, it also needs to be assessed for student proficiency. In addition to giving students credit for participation (or the appearance of participation), it is important to provide feedback so students understand their strengths and weaknesses. Because direct assessment of how students demonstrate their proficiency with learning in a peer review setting is nearly impossible, the experience of peer review needs to be captured and assessed another way. Reflective writing is one way to accomplish this. Examples of reflective writing might include asking students to summarize the feedback they got from peer review and describe how they are (or aren’t) going to use it to continue to work on their essays. In my courses, students include their experiences with peer review in their requests for feedback and self-assessment writing that accompany each essay they turn in. In this way, I can respond to their perceptions of peer review and provide feedback about how to improve. Assessment is also scaled to a particular course’s outcomes and students’ learning needs.

The learning outcomes associated with peer review progress from basic proficiency, to developing proficiency, to demonstrating proficiency of critique both as an author and as a reviewer. Conversely, as students advance, instructors move from more to less scaffolding and support (in the form of teaching, modeling, consulting, and providing the lens of critique), as well as away from assessing the process toward assessing the actual product or the critique provided and the feedback used.

“Implicit structures”: How disciplinary research intersects with habits of mind

Shulman (2005) calls for signature pedagogies to form “habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of the hand” (p. 59), and for disciplines that have not used mentoring, apprenticeship, or practicums as a form of teaching, ¹ a signature pedagogy requires translating all of these habits of that discipline into learning activities. Chick et al.'s (2009) “From Generic to Signature Pedagogies” and the subsequent chapters in Exploring Signature Pedagogies provide a crucial link between the professions that Shulman identified and the signature pedagogies of disciplines. However, articulating a signature pedagogy of a discipline like writing (a discipline that is still arguing for its own disciplinarity as well as negotiating potentially conflicting notions of the discipline like “Writing Across the Curriculum,” “Writing Studies,” and “Rhetoric and Composition”) can be especially difficult because there is no clear profession or even major to which it corresponds. For example, of the 14 institutions that comprise the University of Wisconsin (UW) System, only one institution offers (a recently launched) major in professional writing—UW Stout. ² Instead, at most institutions of higher education, writing is often an emphasis earned with specific coursework relevant to a major like “English.” The lack of correlation for writing between profession, major, and discipline make its “implicit structures”—its “beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and dispositions” (Shulman, 2005: 55)—useful in uniting disciplinary evidence with effective pedagogical designs.

Peer review exists in many variations, but they all have in common asking students to use their own expertise—often called “student expertise” in curricula. Sommers and Saltz (2004) published “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year,” an important study on undergraduate writers in which they found a correlation between student attitudes, values, and beliefs and their patterns of growth as writers. Sommers and Saltz examined a particular group of Harvard students over the course of their undergraduate education and found that students who were willing and able to embrace their role as “novices” at academic writing exhibited the most development. Students’ attitudes, beliefs, and values about expertise greatly impacted their success. One student in their study described the experience of being asked to write an essay as “being asked to build a house without any tools” (Sommers and Saltz, 2004: 131). Sommers and Saltz (2004) call this the paradox of freshman writing: “writing simultaneously as a novice and an expert” (p. 132). Being a novice, to Sommers and Saltz (2004), “involves adopting an open attitude to instruction and feedback, a willingness to experiment, whether in course selection or paper topics, and a faith that, with practice and guidance, the new expectations of college can be met” (p. 134). In contrast, students who retain “old habits” and formulas and do not embrace the role of “novice” in the classroom “have a more difficult time adjusting to college writing” (Sommers and Saltz, 2004: 134). In comparison to the average US student, Harvard students are exceptionally well prepared for postsecondary education. However, this research continues to be groundbreaking because it shows that what makes a difference in their success as academic writers is their attitudes, beliefs, and values—not the mastery of content knowledge. Not unlike first-year students at any other institution, Harvard freshmen are tasked with developing their own theories of writing and their own personal expertise.

While this research predates Shulman’s (2005) eponymous work on signature pedagogies, there are clear connections between this disciplinary research on student learning and the implicit structures of peer review. The “habits” as well as the attitudes, beliefs, and values of students that Sommers and Saltz reference relate clearly to the learning goals and the implicit structures of peer review. First, engaging in peer review bridges the gap between novice and expert: student authors are asked to play the role of novice writers, and in turn, peer reviewers offer their expertise. Secondly, this research demonstrates the critical role of implicit structures: the cultivation of attitudes, values, and beliefs students have about themselves as writers greatly impacts their learning. While I will unpack the implicit structures of peer review below, this research has important implications for pedagogy—these structures in the form of attitudes, values, and beliefs are implicit and must be taught, even to the best-prepared student populations.

In 2011, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project collaboratively developed the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” which has rapidly become an important set of national standards, shared language, and learning goals for the college-level writing and first-year writing curricula. Especially important are the eight habits of mind, which they describe as “ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical.” Instructors are encouraged to “develop activities and assignments that foster the kind of thinking that lies behind these habits and prepare students for the learning they will experience in college and beyond.” This framework identifies curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition as eight key habits of mind that are essential for student success in postsecondary writing.

While the framework articulated in “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” (2011) does not separate the eight habits into “mind, heart, and hand,” their purpose is to make the beliefs, values, and attitudes of student writers visible—in other words, they are working to define the implicit structures of the discipline. These habits of mind are important disciplinary touchstones—foundations for curriculum, assessment, and learning activities. Peer critique is a signature pedagogy because it invokes these habits of mind. Peer review engages student writers in the habits of curiosity, as it both asks writers to communicate their work to an audience of peers and asks peers to engage in questions, answers, evidence, and arguments that they may or may not share. Peer critique fosters openness as it asks students to “listen to and reflect on the ideas and responses of others—both peers and instructors—to their writing.” Peer review develops the habit of engagement as students “make connections between their own ideas and those of others” and “act upon the new knowledge that they have discovered” as a result of that engagement. Creativity is fostered both by having students use peer feedback as part of their writing process, and self-assess the effects or consequences of their creative choices. Peer critique, as a process-based pedagogy, also helps students develop persistence: while students may begin their college-level writing careers with peer review as an externally-imposed assignment, the long-term goal is for students to develop a habit of independently seeking out and using opportunities for feedback to improve and refine their work. Because the responsibilities for learning are shared among student writers and readers, peer review develops responsibility: not just completing a draft to share in class but engaging with their peers effectively and working collaboratively to improve their writing. A peer review process asks peers to ask each other about the choices they make and helps them understand that revision and flexibility are essential habits of effective writers: to the extent that peers (especially in a unevaluated context) can reflect on the choices they make in light of context, purpose, and audience. Students are often assigned a rhetorical purpose but the audience is usually a construction in their mind, and students can be most concerned with teacher-as-assessor. Peer review gives students a chance to respond to the concerns of an actual peer-audience and then assess the effectiveness of their own rhetorical choices. While peer review is not directly a metacognitive activity, it provides students with knowledge about their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers and fosters metacognition by asking students to connect choices they have made to audiences and the purposes for which writing is intended. Peer review as part a curriculum can also provide students with the opportunity to build on their skills from one project and one class to the next.

Though Shulman, SoTL scholars, and disciplinary researchers define habits of mind differently, they agree about what they are in writing, whether one looks at professional or disciplinary practice, or evidence of student learning. The professional practices, evidence of student learning, and “Framework” work together to make the implicit explicit. The potential for peer review to map onto or address these implicit structures is what makes it such a potentially powerful pedagogical practice.

“Deep structures”: From classroom activity to signature pedagogy

Not all peer reviews are created equal nor should they be. One assumption of my claim that peer review is signature pedagogy is that knowledge of students and disciplinary habits of mind inform the design of the activity. Without this foundation, peer review would fail to accomplish the goal of supporting students in their development of those habits. Another assumption is that as students progress and advance through a discipline, so should their habits become more nuanced and complex. For students in general education curricula like first-year writing courses, these kinds of changes may take place in the series of one course. What this means, as I described above, is that the surface structures of peer review need to change and adapt to support student learning. Both peer review’s surface and “deep structures” (“assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how” (Shulman, 2005: 55)) can support or derail student learning.

Even students who are well prepared for college may have never experienced peer review before. Sharing writing—even research-based academic writing—with a peer and offering feedback to other peers may trigger writing anxieties: writing is a personal and often private act, and writing that is going to be assessed and graded may make many students, especially the underprepared and at-risk students, feel nervous or worry about the quality of their work. Sharing writing “publicly” with peers is anxiety-inducing for students who are still growing as writers. Peer review also asks students to question many of their fundamental assumptions about “expertise” in the writing classroom. Most students have never shared their academic writing with anyone but a teacher before—in fact, several of my students have expressed concern that doing so would constitute academic misconduct. Sharing writing, working collaboratively, and helping peers in this way may still be considered “cheating” in some secondary institutions.

Another potential barrier to peer review are the students’ assumptions about expertise. Students often do not feel they have the expertise to help their peers, and others may feel that it is the instructor’s role to improve students’ work. These assumptions and beliefs about expertise are an important part of why peer review is a successful pedagogical strategy. Pedagogical approaches to peer review that acknowledge and engage students in the concept of “expertise” and what it means to be a “student expert,” as well as peer review activities that support students’ development, are examples of Sommers and Saltz’s novice-as-expert paradox. This paradox can be used to the advantage of students: both identifying as novices and using the practices of experts are linked to student success.

The conventional wisdom on cultivating and changing habits is consistency and repetition. This holds true for developing the potential student learning in the practice of a signature pedagogy. One iteration, or even a few, is likely not enough for students to cultivate and sustain new ways of thinking, acting, feeling, or valuing. A signature pedagogy must be used frequently, even if it changes over time. Moreover, modeling is important in translating both the surface structures of peer review and is also central to the deep structures of it as a signature pedagogy. In addition to providing examples and practice on shared readings or example peer papers, instructors can and should model the habits they wish to cultivate in students not only as part of this particular learning activity, but also as part of a seamless set of values about the writing process that relates to the rest of the work—approaching class readings, informing design of class discussions, framing feedback and assessment of student learning, etc. An excellently designed peer review process alone may not transform students, but it has much more potential to do so as part of a seamless curricular design and of pedagogical practices that support students.

A signature pedagogy among many

In “Signature Pedagogies in the Profession,” Shulman qualifies the scope of signature pedagogies by pointing out that they “invariably involve a choice, a selection among alternative approaches to training aspiring professionals. That choice necessarily highlights and supports certain outcomes while, usually unintentionally, failing to address other important characteristics of professional performance” (2005: 55). In other words, a signature pedagogy is also defined by “what it is not—by the way it is shaped by what it does not impart or exemplify” (55). In the case of peer critique, its deficiencies have long been problematized in writing studies: peers are not editors; the audience of peers and instructors is constructed; the act of writing is almost always removed from authentic publication.

Despite its deficiencies, or perhaps because of them, peer critique develops the habits of mind necessary for success in postsecondary writing, and it is just one of many pedagogies in higher education that introduces novices to the many moves experts make. Its surface structures mirror many of the collaborative practices of professional writing. The deep structures of peer review rest upon assumptions of collective disciplinary knowledge about the definition of effective writing. Research in the discipline of writing studies also reveals the implicit structures of peer critique—the importance of student attitudes, values, and beliefs as well as research on student learning that connect and define peer critique as a signature pedagogy in writing studies.

Taught alongside the signature pedagogies of its kin-disciplines in the arts and humanities, peer critique is one of many ways that students develop the habits of mind—or heads, hearts, and hands—that prepare them for success in their disciplines and professions.