It is well established that students in higher education need to develop evaluative skills in order to become effective learners (Guest & Riegler 2022). Assessment for Learning (AfL) is a model for assessment that strengthens learning in schools as well as in higher education (Black et al 2002). This is also the case in physical education teacher education (PETE) (Eather et al 2017, Macken et al 2020) and in school physical education (Leirhaug 2016). One of the key learning strategies in AfL is to activate peers as resources for learning, often operationalised as peer assessment. In PETE, peer assessment (or peer-assisted learning in a broader meaning) has proven to strengthen learning for both the observer and the observed (Lamb et al 2012).

One dimension of peer assessment, that has only scarcely been covered in the PETE context (Macken et al 2020) but that is more highlighted in research of peer assessment in general teacher education (see e.g. Kilic 2016, Tait-McCutcheon & Bernadette Knewstubb 2018), is the tensions inherent in giving feedback to peers on their work, peers who might also often be friends. According to Kilic (2016, 137) preservice teachers “do not feel comfortable when critiquing another student” and Tait-McCutcheon and Knewstubb (2018, 773) argues that “peer assessment could reflect friendships more than learning outcomes”.

Research demonstrates a complexity with regards to the potential for peer assessment in PETE. On the one hand, preservice teachers have expressed that giving feedback to peers creates a positive, safe, equal and relaxed learning environment (Lamb et al., 2012) and peer assessment has been reported to improve competence, confidence and self-efficacy among preservice teachers (Eather et al., 2017). On the other hand, a study by Macken et al. (2020) reported that preservice teachers believe their students would be mean to each other if implementing peer assessment during their school placement practice in PETE.

In this paper, we aim to further explore the complexity involved in peer assessment in PETE to get a deepened and more differentiated picture of this phenomenon. Our overall aim is to contribute to more knowledge about how to involve  preservice teachers in PETE and students in school physical education as resources for learning without risking to cause harm. Drawing on the call from Scanlon et al. (2022) for more studies on how assessment is taught in PETE, our specific aim in this paper is to investigate preservice teachers’ views on what as well as how peer assessment is taught in PETE, to be used in school physical education. We will use Pierre Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of capital, as well as the work of Hay and Penney (2013) on how accountability mechanisms functions in assessment, in order to analyse what is assigned value in peer assessment. The two questions that will guide our analysis in this paper reads: What mechanisms are assigned value in peer assessment according to preservice teachers in PETE? And: How do the mechanisms that are assigned value in peer assessment in PETE function according to preservice teachers? More knowledge about the what and the how in teaching of assessment practices in PETE can improve these practices within school physical education.

The study presented in this paper is conducted as part of a greater project with the aim of exploring how PETE matters for school physical education. In the overall project we have recruited preservice teachers, with physical education as one of their subjects, during their last year in teacher education. During this last year, one campus-placed course in assessment and one school placement course, constituted the contexts from which we collected empirical material to this study (Authors 2021). The participants in this study were 21 preservice teachers from two different PETE institutions in Sweden (10 from uni A and 11 from uni B). The empirical material analysed in this study compriced of: 1. Three audio-recorded seminars (90-120 min each) from the campus-based assessment courses (one seminar from uni A and two from uni B) conducted before the preservice teachers’ school placement studies. 2. Seven individual semi-structured interviews (40-70 min each) (Kvale 1996) conducted during visits at the preservice teachers’ school placement studies (all from uni A). 3. Five individual Stimulated Recall (SR)-interviews conducted during visits at the preservice teachers’ school placement studies (one from A, four from B). 4. Two audio-recorded and semi-structured group interviews (40-60 min each) (Kvale 1996) from the campus-based assessment courses (both from A) conducted after the school placement studies. After having had the empirical material transcribed by an external part, a thematic content analysis was initiated by a process of familiarisation in which all four researchers were engaged (Braun et al 2017). Inspired by an abductive approach (Alvesson & Sköldberg 2017), we allowed ourselves to be open to alternative theories that could help explain the empirical material. The choice of research object was initiated by the impression from the interviews that giving feedback to peers is surrounded by a complexity, both in PETE and in school physical education. The identification of social relationships and certain types of bodies and movements as assigned with value when giving feedback to peers guided our attention towards Bourdieu-inspired interpretations of the social capital (Beames & Atencio 2008) and the physical capital (Redelius & Hay 2010).

The findings indicate that when the what-aspect of ‘social relationships’ is to be implemented into an how-aspect, the preservice teachers calls for continuous interaction ‘over time’ in order to build a safe and an allowing climate for learning. While this interaction can be implemented in PETE and in school physical education, allowing for school children to build social capital (Beames & Atencio 2008), a result from this study that calls for further discussion is how PETE can make continuous interaction between preservice teachers and school students possible during school placement studies. When the what-aspect of ‘articulating what to learn’ is mirrored in relation to the how-aspect of giving ‘correct feedback’ in peer assessment, this displays that physical capital in school physical education is strongly connected to standards of excellence and norms of right and wrong movement technique (Redelius & Hay 2010). These golden norms seem to be upheld by the displayed lack a common language for learning (Larsson & Redelius 2008). A question following from this study is what resources preservice teachers are offered within PETE to embody a language for learning in school physical education? This study also made visible that ‘the emphasis of certain forms of knowledge ’ is highly valued when preservice teachers are to give feedback to their peers, to their students (during school placement) or when they engage students to give feedback to each other. The preservice teachers claim to handle this ‘what-aspect’ of peer assessment by focus their attention on ‘managing the sensitivity’ arising when themselves or their students are to comment on each others’ bodies in movements. In conclusion, the combination of social and physical capital decides what is possible to say to whom when preservice teachers and students are to give feedback to their peers in PETE and in school physical education.

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