'I didn't expect to get so much out of it myself': student perspectives on the relationship between peer mentoring and self assessment

This paper presents case study research into the student experience of becoming a mentor on an undergeaduate Joint Honours programme at Northumbria University. The teaching team who devised the scheme primarily sought to offer peer mentors a realistic but relatively informal learning opportunity which embodied high levels of authenticity in relation to the discipline being studied. Our research into mentors' views of supporting other students, however, illuminated an interesting and important 'side-effect' of mentoring. The ways in which students talked about the experience of becoming a mentor evidenced many of the features of self-assessment, in the sense of developing evaluative expertise (Sadler, 1989) and the kinds of skills and dispositions required for effective lifelong learning (Falchicov, 2005). Our paper considers the ways in which the act of students supporting students prompted active engagement in te process of self-monitoring and the capacity to judge one's own work.