Peer feedback and peer review in higher education: mirroring and transformative practices in active learning processes

To develop feedback literacy (Laici, 2021; Boud & Molloy, 2020) in university students, we need to design learning paths in which feedback becomes a continuous and recursive element. The aim is to activate a learning posture in students, linked to internal feedback (Carless, 2019): a conscious and embedded feedback mode. To achieve this, we need to work on two aspects of higher education: - Learning design (Laurillard, 2014; Rossi & Pentucci, 2021); it, in contemporary contexts, is reified in the structuring of complex training ecosystems in which students can directly experience devices designed for reflexivity and metacognition. The alignment between teacher and students obtained through generative and recursive feedback (Rossi et alii, 2018) and the sense of self-efficacy and self-awareness, obtained through peer feedback are two of the aspects that the teacher designer must pay attention to when preparing a design based on feedback processes (Boud & Molloy, 2012). - Student feedback literacy (Laici, 2021): peer review and peer feedback strategies on learning practices support processes of distancing, reflection, restructuring and improvement, not only in a cognitive but also in a social and intrapersonal dimension (Fishman & Dede, 2016), through mirroring in the action of others (Winstone et alii, 2021). In this contribution, therefore, we would like to present an example of a Peer Review (Mulder et alii, 2014) carried out within two university courses in the pedagogical-didactic field, conducted using the Ladder of Feedback tool (Perkins, 2003; Wilson et alii, 2006). This device proposes an in-depth analysis of the work of peers, through clarification questions, articulated in four phases: Clarify, Value, State Concerns, and Suggest. Peer review is a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive feedback reviews from peers on their work. Producing feedback reviews engages students in multiple acts of evaluative judgement, both about the work of peers and, through a reflective process, about their work; it involves them in both invoking and applying criteria to explain those judgements; and it shifts control of feedback processes into students' hands (Nicol et alii, 2013). Through a final questionnaire on students' perceptions, we wanted to investigate the issues of reciprocity, mirroring, and activation by trying to answer the following questions: - Is giving feedback to peers useful for reflecting on one's own practices and developing metacognition? - Does reviewing the other's artefact activate transformative and improving processes in one's own work?