Introducing a peer learning approach to assessment preparation

When working with children and young people practitioners have a duty of care; safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility (DfE, 2015, p. 9), therefore it is essential to prepare students for their future professional roles and responsibilities. This paper discusses the introduction of an experimental teaching session that develops a peer learning activity during a scheduled lecture. Informed by the theories of action learning, reflection and peer learning I adapted a reflective Triad Model based on the work of Renzulli, (Garcia-Cepero, 2008) and coteaching (Roth and Tobin, 2002) to explore student engagement. The experiment was introduced as an optional activity to prepare the students for an assessed task that is akin to a professional conversation. Assessment requires the student to be both practitioner and researcher, and enables assessment of learning from ‘evidenced based experience’ (Light, Cox and Calkins, 2009 p. 224). Engagement with the peer learning activity was not entirely successful, with few students meeting in peer triads, however, a de-briefing discussion with the students enabled a greater understanding of the limiting factors surrounding the task and will be informative for future cohorts undertaking the module.