The Feasibility of Using Virtual Professional Development to Support Teachers in Making Data‐Based Decisions to Improve Students’ Writing

Abstract

Rubrics can be used to give students targeted feedback on their writing and, therefore, teachers should be able to use them as a type of formative assessment to guide writing instruction. This article describes an exploratory study of how three teachers provided instruction for fourth, fifth, and seventh graders with learning disabilities and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in using a technology-based graphic organizer (TBGO) to compose persuasive essays. Given professional development inclusive of online modules, long-range plans, and virtually facilitated professional learning communities, the teachers used a digital dashboard to (a) monitor students' writing progress with a genre-specific analytic rubric, (b) target a specific instructional skill, and (c) document their instructional decision(s). The article illustrates how educators can effectively use genre-specific writing rubrics in practice to make data-driven decisions about student writing.When teachers provide students with quality feedback on their writing, research suggests that writing outcomes are positive (Graham et al., 2015). Forms of feedback include written comments on the product itself, verbal comments shared during conferences, and even audio comments (see FitzPatrick & McKeown, 2020). Rubrics are another example of formative feedback commonly used to guide students in their writing development. There are different types of rubrics or rating scales, but most are classified as either holistic or analytic (Weigle, 2002).A holistic rubric is used to provide students with an overall impression/score/grade, whereas analytic rubrics are used to evaluate each criterion as a separate entity. Although holistic rubrics are frequently used to score students' writing quality, they have drawbacks since they are not sensitive to small changes in student performance and do not provide targeted feedback (Graham et al., 2015). Analytic rubrics, on the other hand, identify the specific skills students are able to do well and those that need to be improved. A holistic score can be generated with an analytic rubric by looking at individually scored criteria as a collective whole. Indeed, writing researchers have reported using both holistic and an-Correspondence Requests for reprints should be sent to Kelley Regan, George Mason University. Electronic inquiries should be sent to kre-

Improving Writing Feedback for Struggling Writers: Generative AI to the Rescue?

“…All students were first asked to write a persuasive opinionbased essay in response to one of two prompts validated by previous research (Regan et al, 2023b). Examples of the prompts included:…”

“…The vast majority included such important persuasive essay elements such as a topic sentence introducing the opinion, distinct reasons, examples to explain the reasons, summary sentence, and transition words. While this provides some important context, the quantity and quality of students' writing products is not the focus of the current study and is reported elsewhere (Boykin et al, 2019;Day et al, 2023;Evmenova et al, 2016Evmenova et al, , 2020bRegan et al, 2018Regan et al, , 2023b).…”