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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 12-2015 Improving the accuracy of middle school students' self-assessment, peer assessment, and mathematics achievement. Elizabeth Popelka University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of theCurriculum and Instruction Commons, and theJunior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Popelka, Elizabeth, "Improving the accuracy of middle school students' self-assessment, peer assessment, and mathematics achievement." (2015).Electronic Theses and Dissertations.Paper 2324. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2324 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT By Elizabeth Popelka B.A., University of Louisville, 1999 M.A.T., University of Louisville, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Education and Human Development of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction Department of Teaching and Learning University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky December 2015 IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT By Elizabeth Popelka B.A., University of Louisville, 1999 M.A.T., University of Louisville, 2006 A Dissertation Approved on November 23, 2015 by the following Dissertation Committee: ______________________________________ Dissertation Director Karen S. Karp ______________________________________ Elizabeth Todd Brown ______________________________________ Maggie B. McGatha ______________________________________ Jeffrey C. Valentine ______________________________________ Robert N. Ronau ii DEDICATION In loving memory of my mother, Joy Mae Popelka, the first teacher I ever knew, who instilled in me an appreciation for education and the wonderful places it could take me. ii i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I began this journey to my doctorate because I love being a teacher and welcome every opportunity to enhance my practice. Having learned so much from my coursework and gained so much from my research, and before I can finally give back to the field and make my own contribution, I am thrilled to recognize those who made my academic experience so meaningful. I am forever grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their contributions to this study and to my overall growth as an educator. As my Rank 1 program advisor and professor during my early teaching years, Dr. Maggie McGatha laid an appreciation of formative assessment that would become the foundation for this dissertation. Over my coursework and our collaboration on multiple projects, Dr. Elizabeth Todd Brown has been an amazing teacher and mentor, delivering positive—yet honest—pieces of advice that have guided me through my academic experience. Before studying with Dr. Jeffrey Valentine, I had been lucky to muddle through my statistics classes. I appreciate so much his patience with my lack of background knowledge, and I am awed by how much he has taught me about applying statistics to realistic situations. For everything I know about research design and advanced statistical analysis, I must credit Dr. Robert Ronau. The number of hours he has logged in helping me construct and fully grasp the implications of this study is so high I had to quit estimating. Without his efforts, this dissertation would not have been possible. Lastly, I would like to thank my program advisor and dissertation chair, Dr. Karen iv Karp. Because her reputation precedes her, I was flattered when she advised me during my Rank 1 program to pursue a Ph.D. Because of her famously high standards, I was elated when she agreed to be my advisor and dissertation chair. The last several years have produced a number of professional and personal ups and downs that drew out the dissertation process for longer than either of us had planned or would have liked. Because she is not only an incredible teacher and mentor but also a dear friend, Dr. Karp was incredibly sympathetic to and supportive of me even as the length and duration of my dissertation became a source of hardship for her. I am a better student, researcher, teacher, and person, because of Dr. Karp. I am honored to join her impressive list of other “Ph.D. children.” This project truly took a village, and I was lucky to have the most nurturing one I could have hoped for: my colleagues, friends, and “family” at Westport Middle School. I am grateful for the school administrators who provided me access to classes and, most especially, to the fellow teachers who helped validate my rubric validation, examined assessments for validity, relinquished their students to me, and acted as a sounding board when I needed to talk out ideas and frustrations. The statistical analysis required for this study was, at first, beyond the scope of my comprehension, and certain university faculty went over and beyond to help me understand it and carry it out with confidence and ease. I am forever indebted to the following people, all of whom contributed directly to this dissertation: Dr. Christopher Rakes, Dr. Staci Eddleman, Jodie Zeller, Sagan Massey, Kristyn Williams, James Daniels, Lauren Thomas, Dave Thomas, Meagan Anderson, Heather Weis, Jennifer Napier, Emily Hixon, Stacey Hubbard, Torri Martin, Sharon Klump, Laura Viergutz, Jonathan Lippman, Sarah Yost, Melissa Shearon, Dr. Elizabeth v Best, Judith Reader, and Mark Dumouchelle. Talking of strategies to survive the dissertation process, a wise woman, Dr. Kate Grindon, urged, “Find your tribe.” She was totally right: Nobody can understand this process like someone who has gone through it. I could not ask for better friends and Ph.D. sisters than Victoria Miller Bennett, Shannon Stone, and Leah Dix White. And neither could I ask for a more invaluable “big” Ph.D. sister, Dr. Sarah Bush. Finally, all the pages in the world cannot supply adequate words to thank my amazing husband, Ray Brown. In order for me to finish this seemingly never-ending process, he picked up an unbelievable amount of family responsibility, displayed infinite patience and support for my goals, sacrificed countless hours of quality couple and family time, and continued to love me even though, these last couple of years, I’ve had many moments when I was very unlovable. He is my biggest booster and my best friend. I cannot imagine this journey, academic and otherwise, without him. v i ABSTRACT IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT Elizabeth Popelka November 23, 2015 Despite the documented advantages of formative assessment (FA) strategies in elevating student achievement, much of the relevant research is dated and undermined by questionable design and inattention to K-12 settings. In order to fill these voids, this quantitative study tested the effect of a self- and peer-assessment-training instructional sequence, developed with recommendations from past research and employing explicitly described assessment measures and criteria, on middle school students’ assessment accuracy and subsequent mathematics achievement. The researcher hypothesized a correlation between measurable growth in assessment accuracy and gains in achievement, as well as a reciprocal effect of self- and peer-assessment ability. The subjects for this study were drawn from the population of 7th-grade students at a low-achieving urban middle school in a metropolitan area in the Midwest. The students were convenience- and purposive-selected and assigned to treatment and control groups; the treatment group contained 39 students and the control group contained 41 students. Data were collected before and after 10 hour-long self- and peer-assessment training sessions, which were conducted with the treatment group over a 3-week period. vi i This study had an independent variable with two groups, treatment and no treatment, and three dependent variables, achievement, students’ ability to accurately self-assess, and students’ ability to accurately peer-assess. All variables were assessed numerically and analyzed using a multivariate statistical procedure. Statistical tests revealed a positive effect of peer- and self-assessment training on students’ mathematical achievement and ability to accurately self-assess. The intervention did not increase the accuracy of students’ peer assessments, contradicting the foundational conjecture that self- and peer-assessment ability would rise commensurately. Nevertheless, the gains in self-assessment accuracy and student achievement produced by the intervention indicate that teachers should adopt assessment training in classrooms. Ultimately, this study contributes a clear and demonstrably effective instructional sequence; exemplifies successful strategy implementation; and freshly affirms the connection between student assessment practices and achievement. vi ii
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