Assessing and providing feedback for student writing in Canadian classrooms

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Abstract

This paper reports on the feedback and assessment practices of Canadian grades 4–8 teachers; the data are drawn from a national study of the teaching of writing at the middle grades in all ten Canadian provinces and two (of three) territories. Respondents were 216 grades 4–8 teachers from rural and urban schools. Data sources were audio-recorded telephone interviews analyzed using a constant comparative method. Participating teachers were mindful that feedback is important for student self-esteem; they valued peer editing and viewed feedback as essential for fostering students’ writing development; they strove to be what they considered “objective” while adhering to criteria for standardized exams.

Section snippets

Theoretical framework

Assessing writing and providing feedback to students are social practices; these practices are influenced by teachers’ views of what constitutes good writing and good teaching practice within both their local contexts and the broader contexts of education and society (Barton, 2001, Barton et al., 2000). We are interested in the ways in which teachers take up the values, perceptions, and the socio-cultural understandings of effective writing assessment and good writing in their day-to-day

Surveys of teachers’ assessment practices

In the United States, researchers examined assessment and grading practices across the subject areas, identifying trends toward using performance assessments in place of paper-and-pencil assessments (McMillan et al., 2003, Stiggins and Conklin, 1992). These researchers also found that teachers focused on students’ individual development. For example, the 921 grades 3-5 teachers participating in McMillan et al.’s survey (2003) placed greater emphasis on academic performance, effort and

Methods

Data sources were telephone interviews with 216 grades 4–8 teachers of writing (162 female and 54 male teachers) both in rural and urban settings in the ten Canadian provinces and two of the three territories, and provincial and territorial curricula and large-scale writing assessment documents.

We randomly selected schools in four districts, two urban and two rural, in each province and territory, where possible (not all provinces have four or more school districts). The sample consisted of 127

Number and type of assignments

To understand teachers’ assessment and feedback practices, it is important to know how many and what types of writing teachers assign their students. Across the country, teachers assigned primarily print-based compositions. Creative writing (e.g., poetry, stories, plays), personal writing (e.g., journals, diaries), and subject area writing (e.g., descriptive writing, biographies, newspaper reports) were assigned most frequently. Table 1 shows the types of writing that participating teachers

Conclusions and implications

In summary, the pedagogy that teachers describe in this study reflects a social constructivist orientation (Vygotsky, 1986) in that student and teacher talk permeates the writing process, providing assistance and scaffolding for improvements for work in progress. Communication among teachers and students is essential for effective assessment, as Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) advocate, and the teachers in this study certainly report an emphasis on productive, supportive talk. We note that the

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. The authors are grateful to the funding agency and especially thankful to all teachers who participated in this research study. We also thank Kristin Main for her important contributions to the data collection and analysis.

Shelley Stagg Peterson is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. She can be reached at [email protected].

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    Shelley Stagg Peterson is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. She can be reached at [email protected].

    Jill McClay is a professor in the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She can be reached at [email protected].

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