Students’ English writing feedback literacy in peer assessment: validating a discipline-and-context-specific scale

Abstract

Student feedback literacy is essential to academic writing in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. However, there is a scarcity of valid and reliable measures to assess student English writing feedback literacy (SEWFL), especially in the context of peer assessment. To address this gap, this study developed and validated a SEWFL scale in peer assessment with 937 Cambodian university students. The scale comprised two key components: feedback competencies and dispositions. Feedback competencies encompassed students' skills in eliciting, processing, giving, and enacting peer feedback, while feedback dispositions involved students’ appreciation for giving and receiving feedback, readiness to engage and commitment to change. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multi-group CFA confirmed the scale’s validity and demonstrated its structural consistency across students of different genders and academic majors. Additionally, the Pearson correlation analysis revealed significant correlations between the eight subdimensions of SEWFL and students’ English writing goals. The SEWFL scale provides a discipline-and-context-specific measure for researchers and teachers to better understand EFL students’ SEWFL.