Despite the importance of analytic text-based writing, relatively little is known about how to teach to this important skill. A persistent barrier to conducting research that would provide insight on best practices for teaching this form of writing is a lack of outcome measures that assess students' analytic text-based writing development and that…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has led many U.S. states to incorporate on-demand writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. We argue this creates political and pedagogical tensions for teachers to navigate. We discuss how rubric conceptualization (1) is a process wherein a teacher iteratively (co-)constructs…

We investigate students' implementation of the feedback messages they received in an automated writing evaluation system ("eRevise") that aims to improve students' use of text evidence in their writing. Seven 5th and 6th-grade teachers implemented "eRevise" (n = 143 students). Qualitative analysis of students' essays across…

Recent English Language Arts standards emphasize teaching students to use text evidence to support their claims and opinions; yet, students often struggle to do so effectively in their writing. To help students develop this skill, clearer understanding of what effective evidence use entails and targeted feedback to guide students' writing…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has recently led many U.S. states to incorporate text-based writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. This creates political and pedagogical tensions that teachers must navigate in their classroom use of writing rubrics. While prior research has focused on rubric design and/or the…

This study investigates the quality of the writing tasks assigned to native Spanish speakers in bilingual (Spanish-English) contexts, and the relationship between task quality and students' use of an academic register in their native language. Fifty-six language arts tasks were collected from 26 grade 4 and 5 teachers, and four student writing…

The authors argue that the criticisms of their earlier article on teacher logs ("Educational Researcher," March 2009) by Smagorinsky and Willis do not address, much less undermine, the evidence they presented as part of their validation argument about the teacher logs. Moreover, they argue that their method for studying classrooms is not nearly as…

This article describes some of the conceptual and methodological issues that arise when researchers use teacher logs to measure classroom instruction. Data and examples come from the Study of Instructional Improvement, which used teacher logs to study patterns of literacy instruction in schools implementing three comprehensive school reforms. Over…