Teacher, self and peer evaluation of lesson plans written by preservice teachers

The study investigated the effects of three types of evaluation on preservice teachers’ performance, knowledge and attitudes related to writing lesson plans that incorporate technology. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions: teacher-evaluation, self-evaluation or peer-evaluation. All groups completed three class periods of instruction on writing lesson plans, then each subject submitted his/her draft lesson plan. The drafts were evaluated by assigned evaluators (teacher, self or peer), who provided scores and written feedback on a 15-item rubric. Students then revised their lesson plans into final form. All three treatment groups improved their lesson plans significantly from draft version to final version, with the teacher-evaluation group showing significantly greater improvement and writing significantly better final lesson plans than each of the other two groups. Teacher-evaluation and self-evaluation groups had significantly higher scores on a knowledge-based posttest than the peer-evaluation group. Several suggestions are discussed for making further improvements in the self-evaluation and peer-evaluation processes.