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Getting On The Same Page: The Hermeneutics Of Peer Feedback In Composition Classrooms, Mellisa Huffman

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation reconceptualizes print-based and virtual peer feedback (peer review, peer editing, and peer response) within composition classrooms as hermeneutic or interpretive acts. Grounding peer feedback within philosophical hermeneutics explains why empirical research and anecdotal evidence illustrate contradictions regarding peer feedbacks benefits to students. Students' interpretations of what is happening/supposed to happen within peer feedback contexts impacts their performances in these contexts, and these interpretations occur through complex interplays of rhetorical, cultural, linguistic, and contextual interpretive fields. Enacting a hermeneutic pedagogy, which consists of engaging students in a series of scaffolded preparatory and reflective activities, collaborating with students in determining …