Equally assessed? – – Influence of home background and gender on teacher assessment of student reading proficiency in relation to level of achievement in PIRLS 2001

Author(s):

Stefan JohanssonMonica Rosén

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

PRE_D3, Preconference; Paper Session D3

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-08

14:45-16:15

Room:

C E38

Chair:

Lars-Erik Olsson

Discussant:

TIMSS 1999 (Roth et al. 2006) The video study methodology was successfully employed for studying opportunities to learn not only on an international scale in the TIMSS 1995 (Stigler et al. 1999)

Contribution

This study intends to investigate the relationship between student achievement in reading on the one hand and teacher assessment of student reading abilities on the other. The quality of teacher assessment of student skills is crucial for many tasks and purposes, for example to plan or make necessary adjustments in the teaching of reading, or to give feedback to the students or their parents, or to grade the student. Such assessment tasks require accurate and fair judgements with respect to actual performance, regardless of gender and social background. Previous research on student reading performance has repeatedly shown that girls outperform boys in reading achievement (Elley 1992; OECD 2001; Martin, Mullis, Gonzalez and Kennedy 2003; Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez and Kennedy 2003; Rosen, Myrberg and Gustafsson 2005) and that student home background also plays an important role for student educational outcomes (Bourdieu 2002; Yang 2003). Some previous research on teachers assessment has revealed that other factors than the actual performance affect the assessment; factors such as behaviour in class and clearness in handwriting are things that can affect teacher’s assessment (Gipps 1995; Klein & Taub 2005). Furthermore, classroom observation studies have reported that teachers tend to treat boys and girls somewhat differently (Wernersson 1988; Öhrn 1990). The purpose of the current study is to: 1) investigate the agreement between teachers’ rating of students various aspects of reading skills and student performance on reading literacy test; 2) determine potential influences of gender and home background differences on teachers rating; and 3) seek for possible explanations for such influences

Method

The study relies on the Swedish data from the IEA PIRLS 2001 (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) for student in grade 4 (Gonzalez & Kennedy 2003; Rosen et al. 2005). Achievement data and student background information from the questionnaires (student and home questionnaire) was included in the study. The Swedish database from PIRLS 2001 contains additional variables to the international design, among them a number of aspects of various reading and writing skills on which the teacher has rated each and every student on a scale ranging from 1 – 10 (Rosen et al. 2005). The analyses were conducted in a series of multiple regression analysis where the rating of the teacher is taken to be the dependent variable and student performance the independent variable. Information regarding student gender and home background was then entered into the model. Possible interaction effects were also investigated.

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary results indicate that the relationship between teachers rating and student performance is only moderate with a standardised regression coefficient (beta) of about .5. Parents’ educational level has an additional influence on teachers rating of student skills (beta of about .04) indicating that student with higher educated parents on average received higher assessment scores from the teacher. Another influence was related to gender, showing that girls on average received a higher rating from the teacher (beta of about .02). A first tentative conclusion was that there is a substantial gap between student reading performance on the PIRLS reading literacy test and their teachers’ rating of student reading skills. This gap needs to be filled with plausible explanations of which some can be methodological and other of theoretical substance. One tentative conclusion was that teachers’ rating of students reading skills is affected by both gender and parents’ educational level. From an equality viewpoint this result is highly problematic. However, the results calls for further analyses. Analyses of influences of students’ attitudes and interest are still under way, so the final results cannot yet be reported.

References

Bourdieu, P. (2002). The Forms of Capital. Education - Culture Economy, Society. Oxford, University press. Elley, W. B. (1992). How in the World Do Students Read? IEA Study of Reading Literacy. Gipps, C. (1995). Beyond Testing. Towards a theory of educational assessment. London, The Falmer Press. Gonzalez, E. J. and Kennedy, A. M. (2003). PIRLS 2001 User Guide for the International Database. Chestnut hill, Boston College. Klein, J. and Taub, D. (2005). "The effect of variations in handwriting and print on evaluation of student essays." Assessing Writing 10(2): 134-148. Martin, M. O., Mullis, I. V. S., Gonzalez, E. J. and Kennedy, A. M. (2003). Trends in Children’s Reading Literacy Achievement 1991-2001: IEA’s Repeat in Nine Countries of the 1991 Reading Literacy Study. Chestnut Hill, Boston College. Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Gonzalez, E. J. and Kennedy, A. M. (2003). PIRLS 2001 International Report: IEA’s Study of Reading Literacy Achievement in Primary Schools. Chestnut Hill, Boston College. OECD (2001). Knowledge and skills for life, first results from PISA 2000. O. publishing. Rosen, M., Myrberg, E. and Gustafsson, J.-E. (2005). Läskompetens i skolår 3 och 4. Nationell rapport från PIRLS 2001 i Sverige. Göteborg, Göteborgs universitet. Wernersson, I. (1988). Olika kön samma skola? - En kunskapsöversikt om hur elevernas könstillhörighet påverkar deras skolsituation. Stockholm. Yang, Y. (2003). Measuring socioeconomic status and its effects at individual and collective levels: A cross-country comparison. Educational sciences. Göteborg, University of Gothenburg: 247. Öhrn, E. (1990). Könsmönster i klassrumsinteraktion. En observations- och intervjustudie av högstadieelevers lärarkontakter. Educational Sciences. Göteborg Gothenburg

Author Information

Stefan Johansson

University of Gothenburg

Institute for pedagogy and didactics

Göteborg

186

Monica Rosén

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

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