abstract: Writing scientific explanations is increasingly important, and today's students must have the ability to navigate the writing process to create a persuasive scientific explanation. One aspect of the writing process is receiving feedback before submitting a final draft. This study examined whether middle school students benefit more in the writing process from receiving peer feedback or teacher feedback on rough drafts of scientific explanations. The study also looked at whether males and females reacted differently to the treatment groups. And it examined if content knowledge and the written scientific explanations were correlated. The study looked at 38 sixth and seventh-grade students throughout a 7-week earth science unit on earth systems. The unit had six lessons. One lesson introduced the students to writing scientific explanations, and the other five were inquiry-based content lessons. They wrote four scientific explanations throughout the unit of study and received feedback on all four rough drafts. The sixth-graders received teacher feedback on each explanation and the seventh-graders received peer-feedback after learning how to give constructive feedback. The students also took a multiple-choice pretest/posttest to evaluate content knowledge. The analyses showed that there was no significant difference between the group receiving peer feedback and the group receiving teacher feedback on the final drafts of the scientific explanations. There was, however, a significant effect of practice on the scores of the scientific explanations. Students wrote significantly better with each subsequent scientific explanation. There was no significant difference between males and females based on the treatment they received. There was a significant correlation between the gain in pretest to posttest scores and the scientific explanations and a significant correlation between the posttest scores and the scientific explanations. Content knowledge and written scientific explanations are related. Students who wrote scientific explanations had significant gains in content knowledge. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

This research explores the responses of eleven teachers, drawn from teaching, managerial, policy, and union levels, to their involvement in the development and implementation of Teacher Review and Development (TRAD) and Individual Development Plans (IDP). Through a case study methodology that uses a phenomenological approach, this research found that TRAD and IDP had little credibility as tools of teacher development or appraisal for teachers because of a range of complexities that included the politicisation of the processes, a lack of financial and resource support, and varied quality control measures. The research elicited a list of criteria for successful design and development of appraisal processes. These are detailed in Chapter Five of the thesis. They are rigorous monitoring and modelling of the processes, clear goals with stated end dates and recognition for involvement, appraisal that is integrated in existing work practices and based on shared understandings of work value, the provision of resources and time targeted at the appraisal process, a commitment to identifying and acting on inefficiencies, appraisal that is focused on teacher development and not directly linked to salary "reward". The research concludes that authentic teacher review and development will not take place until teachers themselves take on the responsibility, as a professional group, external to their employer, for the design of teacher review and development.