The Effect of Peer Review to the Improvement of Gifted Elementary Science Students’ Open Inquiry

The purpose of this study is to figure out gifted elementary science students’ improvement in performing open inquiry after peer review. In this study, gifted fifth-grade students performed open inquiry and review of each other as peers after the inquiry. Students’ inquiries were evaluated and the influences of the feedback from the peer reviews were analyzed in relation to the inquiry performances. As a result of this study, three key points were discovered: First, the evaluation score increased with frequent feedback or long discussions. On the other hand, with less feedback, the evaluation score didn’t rise. Second, there were three types of improvement in inquiry related to peer review: No. 1 was improvement after feedback given by themselves. No. 2 was reflection of feedback given to other groups. As a last type, No. 3 was that the students learned from other groups’ presentation without any feedback and improved their inquiry. Third, there were five kinds of giving feedback; (1) feedback understanding the inquiry correctly, (2) insufficiency of peer’s inquiry without deep thought. (3) on the usefulness of the inquiry, (4) on the scientific and logic validity through critical thinking, and (5) how to develop the inquiry. In these kinds of feedback, the fourth kind of feedback (4) occurred most frequently but the fifth (5) occurred rarely. It means peer review helps students develop their critical thinking ability and teachers should encourage students to give peers feedback of the fifth kind.