Fostering pre-service teachers' self-regulated learning through self- and peer assessment of wiki projects

This study investigates whether self-regulated learning of pre-service early-childhood teachers is a viable pedagogy to improve the quality of their wild-based projects. A total of 76 early-childhood pre-service teachers in their first year of study at a teacher training institute in Hong Kong participated in this study. The tasks involved were based on seven principles for supporting and developing self-regulated learning. The pre-service teachers formed groups to apply the skills and knowledge that were taught by the author by creating educational wild sites for young children to learn about a topic of their choice. This was then followed by preliminary-self-assessment, class presentations of the wild projects, peer assessment, revision of the projects and final-self-assessment. Indeed, the pre-service teachers' involvement in assessing wild projects perfectly aligns with the collaborative spirit of authoring wiki projects. Quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire and the self- and peer assessment reports, whilst qualitative data were collected from a focus group held with six of the students. It is noteworthy that the students tended to be more demanding of themselves than of their classmates, as shown by a significant difference between preliminary-self assessment and peer assessment in the scores for three out of four criteria (p value = 0.011). The mean for preliminary-self-made video was rated the lowest by preliminary-self-assessment but it was rated the highest by peers. Since the p-value is 0.024, which is less than 0.05, this difference is significant. The focus-group participants thought their peers and the teacher provided helpful feedback, but did not find the self assessment particularly useful. Although the data from the questionnaires and focus groups show that the pre-service teachers considered formative assessment approaches helpful, and all the mean final-self-assessment scores improved, the differences between preliminary-self-assessment and final-self-assessment were not significant. The research findings show that the students were active wild creators and assessors and yet they did not have enough confidence in themselves. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.