The purpose of this study was to find out more about upper secondary school students ́ experience of peer response to media productions, eg movies and digital stories. We also explored how they learn peer response, how they use it and how peer response affects students’ choice of content for the media productions that they produce. The methods that we have used is an unstructured lesson observation, combined with discussions in two focus groups with 1st and 2nd grade students enroled at the Arts program at a secondary school in a metropolitan area in Sweden. The results of the study show that students experience peer response as positive but emphasises the importance of the teachers’ attitude and expertise as essential both to the students learning process as well as to their experience of giving and receiving feedback from a fellow student. The students find it difficult to be completely honest when they give response to a friend. The teachers’ response always outweighs the response from a fellow student and the students in this study do not use the peer response to revise and improve their media productions. The study shows that the students do not adapt the content of their media productions due to the fact that classmates will assess the result. They perceive media productions as something per definition accessible to the public, that is, the products will be showcased in public, for example, published on the internet. The students relate to this fact as they select content to their media productions. / Syftet med denna studie har varit att ta reda på mer om gymnasieelevers upplevelser av kamratrespons på medieproduktioner, t.ex. filmer och digitala berättelser. Vi har också undersökt hur de lär sig kamratrespons, hur de använder sig av den och på vilket sätt kamratrespons påverkar elevernas val av innehåll till de medieproduktioner som de producerar. Metoderna som vi har använt oss av är en ostrukturerad lektionsobservation i kombination med diskussioner i två olika fokusgrupper med elever från årskurs 1 och 2 på det Estetiska programmet på en gymnasieskola i ett storstadsområde. Resultatet av studien visar att eleverna upplever kamratrespons som någonting positivt men framhåller att lärarens attityd och expertis är avgörande för såväl övning som upplevelsen av att ge och ta emot respons från en kamrat. Eleverna upplever att det är svårt att vara helt ärlig när de ger respons till en kamrat. Lärarens respons väger alltid tyngre än kamraters och eleverna i studien använder sig heller inte av kamraternas respons för att omarbeta och förbättra sina medieproduktioner. Studien visar att eleverna inte anpassar innehållet till sina medieproduktioner utifrån vetskapen om att klasskamraterna kommer att ge respons. Eleverna uppfattar medieproduktioner som per definition publika, d.v.s. produkter som kommer att visas upp offentligt, exempelvis publiceras på internet och detta faktum förhåller sig eleverna till när de väljer innehåll till sina medieproduktioner.

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning-making expressed by pupils in upper primary school when they work with peer response while writing an explanatory and comparative text. The questions answered through the study concern, firstly, what pupils aim their written response at when they read texts, and secondly, what experiences the pupils highlight in the work of giving and receiving peer response. The theoretical foundation on which the study rests is dialogism (Bakhtin 1952–1953/1997). The pupils’ response work is considered in terms of the significance of dialogue for learning, in which language functions as a mediating tool (Säljö 2000). In the texts analysed in the study, there is an interaction between writer and reader, and there is a dialogue that can be related to earlier texts and the conventions developed there (Ajagán-Lester, Ledin et al. 2003, Evensen 1999). The empirical material for the study comes from a class with 23 pupils in grade 5. The material consists of pupils’ written response to classmates’ texts, pupils’ written reflections and six interviews with pupils about working with peer response. The result shows that the pupils are aware that they are writing for readers and that they must therefore think about how the reader is supposed to understand the text. The response is geared above all to the purpose and readers of the text and to how the content is organized. In cases where spelling and punctuation become an obstacle to an understanding of the text, there is also response about that. Pupils appear to be able to utilize their knowledge of text to give a response to classmates’ texts and to their own texts. The pupils also say that they will retain what they have learned in this writing project in future situations when they have to write texts. The double dialogue stands out as central. Interaction is important and the conventions are used to achieve what the pupils’ appear to have in focus: the reader’s understanding of the text. Through contexts where pupils meet in dialogue about text, meaning is created. In this study pupils in upper primary school state that response work and the resulting transactions lead to a knowledge of how to write texts, and through this meaning is created.