Mighty Digests # 6: CROMDAL et AL., ‘Doing reluctance’: managing delivery of assessments in peer evaluation

Article: Cromdal, J., Tholander, M. & Aronsson, K. (2007). ‘Doing reluctance’: managing delivery of assessments in peer evaluation (pp. 203-223). In A. Hepburn & S. Wiggins (Eds.) Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction. Cambridge University Press.

“The present analysis mainly draw on a single extract of talk, taken from a twenty-minute evaluation session involving a group of five eighth-grade students and their teacher” in a Swedish school.

The article aims at demonstrating “how students display reluctance in relation to the institutional activity as such”. (p.203)

The article presents, through the analysis of discourse, the different means of showing reluctance in a peer-constructed response to the request of the teacher.

In fact, the biggest dilemma faced by the students is the individual versus the collective benefit/danger of evaluation.

The main topic of the article is “peer assessment and evaluation”. The evaluation doesn’t  assess learning outcomes, but instead focuses on the process of learning.

The discourse presented (and constructed) is between “the educational order of the school and the social order of the peer group”. (p. 218)

In my opinion, some of the most interesting points are:

1. The use of the teacher’s rhetoric construct “I was thinking…” to summon students to action.
2. A negative assessment seems to be a dispreferred type of action.
3. The transformation performed by the teacher of a “dunno”, which is neutral, into a “nothing (negative)”. (p. 215)
4. The ambiguous nature of laughter, which is always difficult to interpret. In some cases, as emerged from the article, it may be a supporting tool among peers.
5. Students striving to fulfill the explicit and implicit requirements of both the institutions, represented by the teachers and by their peers.

The article shows “how public displays of reluctance serve as practical resources for participants to handle a set of institutional dilemmas.” (p. 219)

The article was rich in insightful interpretations, but, in my opinion, it could be presented in half the number of pages.

I also find it hard to agree with the very first statement of the article: “School is the home of peer culture”. (p. 203)

Is it?