Understanding the learning process of peer feedback activity: An ethnographic study of Exploratory Practice

This ethnographic study attempts to find, reveal and understand the learning possibilities, from the social learning perspective, in the process of peer feedback activity in a College English classroom for non-English majors in China. The study reveals the nature of Exploratory Practice (EP), and the investigation is guided by EP principles, aiming at exploring the viability of the practice in this specific teaching and learning context. Through classroom observation, discourse analysis, discussion, interviews and drafts of students’ writing, the study finds five group cooperative patterns, represented by the five patterns of discursive interaction: collaborative, expert–novice, dominant–dominant, dominant–passive and passive–passive. Wherein the former two patterns witness the obvious reciprocal nature, the latter three seem not to. The subsequent classroom discussion reveals a general conformability of the teacher and students’ understanding of the virtues and problems of the activity, and the broadening of the teacher’s understanding in this social process. Meanwhile through discussion and interview, the practitioners reached a consensus that the teacher’s tutoring is necessary to turn the problems into possible learning opportunities where the learners act as the learning agents. The study also discussed the possible ways of the teacher’s tutoring in the activity in a specific context.