This study evaluated the effectiveness of a school-based training that attempted to improve the reliability of holistic scores teachers assigned to the writings of elementary school students. Seventeen teachers at one suburban elementary school located in the Southeastern United States participated in three training sessions that allowed for scoring practice and group discussions. The trainers, or presenters, were "faculty-experts." A comparison of scores the participants assigned to students' writings before and after the training was conducted. The analyses included t-tests that compared the participants' mean scores to the scores assigned by raters from the state, a within-group analysis of reliability as measured by Cronbach's Alpha, and percentage agreement analyses. The results suggested that the in-house training activities promoted higher inter-rater reliability of scores assigned to students' writings by the teachers in this study. This study also compared teachers identified as being highly confident writers with teachers who reported low levels of self-confidence related to writing. Prior to the training, the highly confident teachers' scores tended to be lower than the state scores and the scores assigned by their less confident peers. During group discussions, however, the "high-confidence" group was just as likely to change their scores to a higher level as to a lower level, and by the end of the training, both groups demonstrated more consistent score patterns.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-4538 |
| Date | 01 January 2008 |
| Creators | Farmer, Lisa |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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