Education Commons^™

Assessing Writing - What Doesn't Work, But Is Used Anyway, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

This is an excerpt from my book, Johnson, A. (2024). Being and becoming teachers of writing: A meaning-based approach. Routledge. It should be out in March/April of 2024.

https://www.routledge.com/Being-and-Becoming-Teachers-of-Writing-A-Meaning-Based-Approach-to-Authentic/Johnson/p/book/9781032355726

Improving Second Language Learning Through Performance-Based Assessment Practices, Maria Granados

Dissertations

From the time of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) to the present day, standardized testing has become the benchmark measure for student assessment and school accountability in the United States. Multilingual learners are a vulnerable population with more testing and accountability requirements than mainstream students. Not only are they required to learn a second language, but they are also assessed within the same standardized testing paradigms as their peers - native speakers of the English language. This study aimed to examine and evaluate the benefits of instructional practices and assessments that provide multilingual students and teachers prompt and …

“My Work Doesn’T Need To Be Perfect As Long As The Effort Is There”: A Case Study Of Multilingual Student Perceptions Of Labor-Based Grading Contracts In The First-Year Writing Classroom, Allison M. Hosman

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Recent developments in the fields of both TESOL and Composition indicate a need for conceptualizing and developing assessment practices that support the needs of multilingual writers that are in line with the aims of justice-oriented pedagogies. One such specific pedagogical practice, assessment, has been proposed as an area of pedagogy in which to operationalize approaches that maintain and sustain justice in the multilingual composition classroom. Although contract grading, and more specifically labor-based grading contracts, have been at the center of such recent conversations, few investigations have centered multilingual students, asking how they perceive and understand such an assessment method in …

Crafting A Writing Response Community Through Contract Grading, Sarah Klotz, Kristina Reardon

Journal of Response to Writing

As labor-based grading contracts gain momentum in first year writing classrooms, new kinds of response to writing take center stage. We explore how session notes composed by embedded peer tutors and students become rich tools in a writing process and create a gateway to the writing center for first-year students. By reading session notes in conversation with students’ reflective writing, we put forward three key findings: students articulate a relationship between building confidence in their writing and their willingness to seek, receive, and value feedback; students discuss how the labor required for an ‘A’ pushed them to access and learn …

High Quality, Equity, And Assessment: An Analysis Of Variables Impacting English Learner Standardized Science Test Performance And Implications For Construct Validity, Maria Del Carmen Salazar, Joanna K. Bruno, Melissa P. Schneider

Curriculum and Instruction: Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, assessment is seen as a lever that can facilitate high-quality education. This study on English learners, students whose native language is not English, was based on data from eighth-grade English learners’ performance on science general and content-specific (physical, life, and earth science) standardized exams and an English language proficiency exam. The researchers utilized regression analysis to examine factors (i.e., socioeconomic status, home language, English language proficiency, and receptive and productive elements of language) that are predictive of English learner performance in general and content-specific science standardized assessments to identify implications for construct validity of high-stakes science …

Feedback To Feed Forward: Creating Formative Feedback To Improve Student Writing, Adam R. Huttenga

Culminating Experience Projects

Feedback to students has been highlighted in the literature as an area where improvements are needed. Students need high quality, specific, usable, and timely feedback. They also need guidance and tools to help them engage with, reflect on, and learn from that feedback in order to close the gap between their writing and the expected standards. In order to help students improve their writing, teachers must develop written feedback that is formative and feeds forward into future writing assignments. This project explores how effective formative feedback can be achieved within a social constructivist theoretical approach to learning, in which an …

Impact Of Student-Tracked Reading Fluency, Hannah Scotton

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This action research project was driven by the researcher's interest on the impact that student-tracked reading fluency has on fluency growth. The researcher implemented a repeated reading fluency intervention with a group of eight first grade students from her classroom. Four of the eight students tracked their reading fluency scores on a graph while the other four students, in the control group, did not record their data. Throughout the study, the eight would individually work with the instructor during their repeated reading. The same repeated reading passage was used with all eight students. The findings from this action research project …

Diseño De Una Prueba De Clasificación De Español No Estandarizada, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

Resumen

El presente estudio propone una nueva prueba de clasificación en línea específicamente creada para los estudiantes de español de New York City College of Technology (NYCCT), una institución caracterizada por la elevada diversidad de su comunidad educativa. En 2017 el Departamento de Humanidades decidió crear su propia prueba de clasificación de lenguas. En el caso del idioma español, esta se creó y se pilotó en 2018 con una muestra de 144 alumnos distribuidos en 3 niveles: inicial, intermedio y avanzado alto. Los resultados de esta práctica mostraron datos relevantes que permitieron identificar factores inesperados en el análisis, como la …

Learning From Our Limits: Lessons To Hold Tight, Kara B. Douma

New Jersey English Journal

United to prioritize our humanity, we clear the plate to more comfortably make space for what matters most. Educators achieve this by focusing on priority Standards, partnering with students for content, and reframing our needs to use assessment as learning.

Building And Maintaining Sanctuary Spaces Through Face To Face Writing Assessment, Jeffrey Austin, Ann Burke, Ellen Foley, Gretchen Rumohr

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Seasoned secondary and college instructors discuss successful face-to-face assessment, especially in virtual settings. F2F assessment frees educators to co-create equitable literacy learning experiences with students, encourages agency, demystifies the grading process, develops the classroom community, and brings meaningful inquiry about writers’ own skills and practices, ultimately disrupting inequities and inequalities of traditional grading and creating “sanctuary spaces” for all writers.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Thompson’S (2105) Survey Of Language Usage And Spanish Of Heritage Learners Placement Program Exam At The High-School Level, Elizabeth Villanueva

Doctoral Dissertations

Language placement test serve with multiple purposes to measure the language abilities and performance of language learners to place them in the most appropriate language course with curriculum that best meets the language needs. There is the need to assess appropriately the Spanish heritage language learners’ (SHLLs) abilities at the high-school level. Therefore, this mixed-method study investigated how Thompson’s (2015) modified Yes or No 10-question Survey of Language Usage (Survey) and the three part Spanish for Heritage Language Learners Placement Program Exam (Placement Test) could be used effectively with three Spanish class levels of HLLs at the high-school level to …

Teachers’ Use Of Standardized Assessments To Monitor Learning And Its Impact On Student Reading Achievement, Eilyn Sanabria

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reading instruction must be “intentional, systematic, and explicit” and “implemented by a knowledgeable teacher” (Ruetzel & Cooter, 2019, p. 87). The era of accountability has brought standardized assessments to the forefront of reading instruction. However, gaps about assessment-related and instructional practices and their impact on student achievement exist in the literature. The present study aims to provide needed insights on how these practices help or hinder, specifically, historically low-performing students.

Using student achievement and teacher survey data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten 2011 (ECLS-K), and through the lens of data use theory (Hutchins, 1995; Spillane, 2012), hierarchical multiple …

Formative Space: Literacy Practices In 21st Century Curriculum Making, Mary C. Ott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Partnerships for 21st Century learning support curricular reforms for global, cross-disciplinary competencies that will leverage and benefit education technologies. However, this research partnership with a literacy program developer occasioned an opportunity to study curriculum making in the 21st century that did not make assumptions about technologies and competencies. The integrated thesis based on this project pushes boundaries on how assessment and curriculum making are conceptualized by exploring broader questions of inquiry and participation through literacy and assessment practices in six junior elementary classrooms in Ontario, Canada, over a two-year period. Chapter 1 provides the background and purpose of the study …

Second Language Acquisition And Standardized Assessment Practices, Hal Scott Schmeisser

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the history of the United States, tests have been utilized as a means to exclude and marginalize immigrant and minority populations, and in the absence of a national language policy have served as de facto language policy. English Learners (ELs) have been among the fastest-growing student populations in the United States, comprising a heterogeneous group with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Research findings concerning the assessment of ELs highlight a significant difference in the academic performance of these students from that of their native English speaking classmates. ELs face a substantial hurdle in learning both English and academic content …

Assessment Literacy: Implications For The Literacy Professional, Bobbie Kabuto, Sinead Harmey

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

This article explores how the general term of assessment literacy can be specified to the area of reading through the lens of the informal reading inventory, Qualitative Reading Inventory-5. This article will investigate the common misconceptions that teachers, who were enrolled in a graduate program to become state-certified specialized literacy professionals, had when conducting and interpreting the QRI-5. The data that will be presented is from a project that examined the theories that undergird informal reading inventories, and how teachers understood these theories. We will then include recommendations for improving assessment literacy for developing specialized literacy professionals.

Grading For Growth: Introducing New Assessment Approaches In Traditional Grading Models, Beth A. Walsh-Moorman, Katie Ours, Aubrey Deaton, Maura Mcginty-O'Hara

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article explores three teachers’ experiences introducing a new assessment approach in an existing school-wide, grading framework. Teachers explore how they were able to manipulate the school framework in a way that allowed (and required) students to revise and rewrite until they had achieved mastery on key writing assignments.

Beyond The Red Pen: A Functional Grammar Approach To Evaluating The Written Language Of Deaf Students, Jennifer Kilpatrick, Kimberly A. Wolbers

Theory and Practice in Teacher Education Publications and Other Works

Deaf students often differ from their hearing peers in written language development. Providing developmentally appropriate instruction is ideal, yet current methods of writing assessment do not provide teachers with sufficient information regarding the written language (i.e., syntactic) development of deaf students. In this research, we use a Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) approach to language analysis to provide teachers with a new way to evaluate deaf students’ writing. This project consisted of two studies. The first study focused on determining whether SFG analysis could be helpful for teachers of the deaf. The second study focused on mapping a trajectory of the …

Assessment Of Literacy Pedagogy Using Gratitude, Glenn Auld, Andrew Eyers, Joanne O'Mara

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper considers aspects of a course redesign that focuses on motivating Pre-service Teachers to engage in negotiating relevant literacy teaching pedagogies in their discipline. The purpose of this article is to describe how we approached the teaching of literacy with Pre-service Teachers, in ways that valued the Pre-service Teachers’ relationships with secondary students using notes of gratitude. These notes provided the Pre-service Teachers with an opportunity to communicate in plain language to the students what they learnt from them about literacy pedagogy. The shift from the focus on the subject matter of literacy to the enactment of literacy teaching …

Examining Diagnostic Utility Of Celf-5 Sentence Comprehension Test, Dayana Lituma-Solis

NERA Conference Proceedings 2019

In our partnership with urban schools serving large populations of students from lower socioeconomic and culturally diverse backgrounds, we have provided research-based interventions for improving the reading skills of at-risk readers in first and second grade. Our research augments the school’s response-to-intervention (RTI) while simultaneously investigating the efficacy of our assessments and interventions. Because the school we work with tends to have insufficient personnel and resources to serve all who need RTI, it is essential that our screening measures can accurately identify children who may need extra intervention. Last year we were asked to assess kindergarteners and provide an intervention …

Gaining Access To The Language Of Science: A Research Partnership For Disciplined, Discursive Ways To Select And Assess Vocabulary Knowledge, H. Emily Hayden, Anupma Singh, Michelle Eades Baird

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

To equalize access to science learning across genders and demographic groups, access to the disciplinary language of science is one place to start. The language of science is highly challenging and specialized, and difficulties acquiring this language contribute to disparities in science achievement across diverse student groups. This study used a pre-post design to analyze effectiveness of a brief classroom science vocabulary assessment designed to assess receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge across multiple sections of one 7^th grade science teacher’s class. Vocabulary was selected and analysis conducted by an interdisciplinary research partnership including the science teacher, a literacy specialist, …

A Validation Program For The Self-Beliefs, Writing-Beliefs, And Attitude Survey: A Measure Of Adolescents' Motivation Toward Writing, Katherine Landau Wright, Tracey S. Hodges, Erin M. Mctigue

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent findings reveal clear evidence that students’ low performance on writing tasks is often related to problems with motivation. Writing curriculum and interventions produce varying effects on adolescents’ writing outcomes, and such variations may be mediated by motivation. However, without a valid tool for measuring students’ motivation towards writing, these effects cannot be quantified. In this study we present the results of our multi-study validation program for the Self-Beliefs, Writing-Beliefs, and Attitude Survey (SWAS). This measure is designed for monitoring students' motivation towards writing, as well as identifying variables that mediate student achievement. We first addressed substantive validation through a …

Solo Taxonomy As Efl Students’ Disciplinary Literacy Evaluation Tool In Technology-Enhanced Integrated Astronomy Course, Nadezhda Chubko, Julia E. Morris, David H. Mckinnon, Eileen V. Slater, Geoffrey W. Lummis

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Whilst the role of disciplinary literacy in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is becoming more prominent, there appears to be little adaptation or allowance made for English as a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) students learning science in English, as well as no clear understanding of what comprises disciplinary literacy in science. In this article, we define the construct of disciplinary literacy in science education and justify the use of the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, Teaching for quality learning at university 1982) as a tool for measuring EFL students’ disciplinary literacy …

Concepts Of Online Text: Examining Online Literacy Skills Of Elementary Students, Jodi Pilgrim, Sheri Vasinda, Christie Bledsoe, Elda E. Martinez

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Reading online text presents unique challenges for elementary students as they develop and extend fundamental literacy skills to various media. Traditional assessments of concepts about print inspired the authors’ research, which applies a similar approach to address “screen handling” instead of book handling. The purpose of their ongoing research has been to develop an instrument to assess concepts related to online reading. The Concepts of Online Text (COT) assessment measures knowledge of online navigation and text features. Quantitative analysis of student performance data using the COT has the potential to provide developmental insight into elementary students’ proficiencies in conducting internet …

What Counts As Common Core Aligned? An Examination Of A Reading Program's Agreement With The Common Core State Standards, Kim Skinner, Alecia Tate, Emily France, Gina Stocks

The Journal of Balanced Literacy Research and Instruction

Passage and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) created numerous difficulties for educational stakeholders. One such difficulty, determining the alignment of previously utilized curricula to the CCSS, forced many states, districts, and schools into purchasing “new” curricular resources marketed as “Common Core Aligned” without any available auditing process to validate the claims made by publishers. Since initial implementation of CCSS, measures for determining alignment have been developed. This study examined the alignment of a widely used reading program, Adventures Common Core (pseudonym), to the Common Core State Standards using a modified version of the Educators Evaluating the Quality …

Smuggling In Creativity: My Process Of Creating Spaces In The Hierarchical School System Of The Republic Of Korea To Stash The Seeds Of Creative Thinking, Ray Symonds

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

I began the CCT program several years into a teaching career in South Korea. My goal at the time was to better understand creativity so as to better support my own students’ creative development. This synthesis discusses some of the challenges I faced in bring CCT into my own classroom and some of the ways I tried to implement what I learned through the program in my own classes. My role as a Guest English Teacher is explored in how it enabled me to use my classroom as a testing ground for CCT concepts. The application of these CCT concepts …

Teaching Peer Feedback As Ethical Practice, Derek Miller, Troy Hicks, Susan Golab

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Even with weeks of building a classroom community and deliberate instructional scaffolding, students may not engage in thoughtful peer review. One teacher discovers how he must place a deep, intentional value on the feedback itself—and the writers who provided it to one another.

Reframing Readiness: Through The Cracked Looking Glass: The Framework For Success In Postsecondary Writing As Assessment Model, David Hyman

Publications and Research

The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project) describes experiences and habits of mind that will equip students for success in college writing. This column highlights examples of the values espoused by the Framework and aims to increase understanding of this statement, advocating for its rich conception of writing.

The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Assessing Children's Acquisition Of Basic Literacy Skills In Developing Countries (Superseded Version), Australian Council For Educational Research

Assessment GEMS

The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), administered individually in about 15 minutes, measures the most basic foundation skills for literacy acquisition in the early grades. The assessment was developed by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) through funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank (Gove & Wetterberg, 2011), in addition to resources provided by RTI. The EGRA was developed to provide a battery of assessments of basic reading skills for developing countries to monitor the status of early reading in primary schools. The assessment tool was first implemented in The Gambia and Senegal …

Equitable Written Assessments For English Language Learners: How Scaffolding Helps, Marcelle A. Siegel, Deepika Menon, Somnath Sinha, Nattida Promyod, Cathy Wissehr, Kristy L. Halvorson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the effects of the use of scaffolds in written classroom assessments through the voices of both native English speakers and English language learners from two middle schools. Students responded to assessment tasks in writing, by speaking aloud using think aloud protocols, and by reflecting in a post-assessment interview. The classroom assessment tasks were designed to engage students in scientific sense making and multifaceted language use, as recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards. Data analyses showed that both groups benefited from the use of scaffolds. The findings revealed specific ways that modifications were supportive in helping students …

Dialogic Conversations In An Embedded Literacy Assessment Field Experience, Lucy Spence, Amy Donnally, Amy Johnson Lachuk, Marcie Ellerbe

Faculty Publications

Preservice teachers often come into teacher education programs with a positivist view of assessment, which may have developed during their own schooling experiences. For this reason, purposefully constructed course work and field experiences must be offered to enable them reframe their conceptions of literacy assessment and to complicate the assessment practices that have become most familiar to them. This paper examines a course in which, the aim is to intentionally counter the positivist testing culture and invest in helping preservice teachers understand assessment as a multi-faceted, dynamic process of inquiry.