The Challenge of Evaluating Students’ Scientific Literacy in a Writing-to-Learn Context

Abstract

This paper reports on the challenge of evaluating students' scientific literacy in a writing-to-learn context, as illustrated by our experience with an online sciencewriting project. In this mixed-methods study, Year 9 students in a case study class (13-14 year olds, n = 26) authored a series of two 'hybridised' short stories that merged scientific and narratives genres about the socioscientific issue of biosecurity. In seeking to measure the efficacy of the intervention, we sought evidence of students' conceptual understanding communicated through their stories. Finding a suitable instrument presented our first challenge. This led to the development of scoring matrices to evaluate students' derived sense of scientific literacy. Student interviews were also conducted to explore their understanding of concepts related to the biosecurity context. While the results of these analyses showed significant improvements in students' understanding arising from their participation in the writing tasks, the interviews highlighted a second challenge in evaluating students' scientific literacy; a disparity between their written and vocalised understandings. The majority of students expressed a deeper level of conceptual understanding at interview than they did in their stories. The interviews also revealed alternative conceptions and instances of superficial understanding that weren't expressed in their writing. Aside from the methodological challenge of analysing stories quantitatively, these findings suggest that in a writing-to-learn context, evaluating students' scientific literacy can be difficult. An examination of these artefacts in combination with interviews about students' written work provided a more comprehensive evaluation of their developing scientific literacy. The implications of this study for our understanding of the derived sense of scientific literacy, as well as implications for classroom practice, are also discussed.

The Effects of Writing to Learn (WTL) on Academic Achievement and Attitude to Lesson in English Classes

“…The results concerning the academic success of the students reveal out a parallelism with the studies conducted by making use of the WTL activity (31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50). Considering the values obtained at the end of the research, it was found that; the students who were taught the SPT through the letter writing activity, which is one of the WTL activities, became more successful than the students who were taught through the traditional teaching method.…”

“…They have carried out an experimental study to find out that the students who used the WTL activity were more successful. When the literature is reviewed there can be seen plenty of studies related to WTL activities in variety of fields in variety of formats such as thesis or articles [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Studies related to Teaching English as a Second Language using WTL activities are very rare.…”

Students' regulation of their emotions in a science classroom

“…This finding mirrors earlier research conducted by the first and third authors that found that engaging students in a novel form of representation in science calls for explicit scaffolding to ensure that students focus sufficiently on the desired content and communicate their learning appropriately. In their study, Tomas and Ritchie () found that middle‐school students, who wrote short stories about a socio‐scientific issue, often neglected to include sufficient science in their writing, instead preferring to focus on writing a good story. Collectively, these findings suggest that novel learning activities must be carefully managed by the classroom teacher to ensure that the topic is relevant and equally motivating as the task itself, and that students' positive emotions do not direct them away from the intended learning.…”

Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning

“…A study by Tomas and Ritchie (2015) demonstrated how incorporating writing into the science curriculum can be used as a tool for making meaning of science concepts. Tomas and Ritchie (2015) examined the use of "BioStories," a writing-to-learn strategy, where students created stories about biosecurity.…”

“…A study by Tomas and Ritchie (2015) demonstrated how incorporating writing into the science curriculum can be used as a tool for making meaning of science concepts. Tomas and Ritchie (2015) examined the use of "BioStories," a writing-to-learn strategy, where students created stories about biosecurity. This task was aimed at developing students' scientific inquiry skills, to evaluate to what extent this program developed students' scientific literacyboth in terms of scientific content knowledge and in the ability to understand how science relates to human affairs.…”