The aim of the present study is to examine the writing disposition of convicts and prisoners in Silivri Penal Institution Compound who study at Open Education Secondary School based on various variables. In the present study, "Writing Disposition Scale" that includes 21 5-point Likert type items, developed by Piazza and Siebert (2008)…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of writing on the content areas when coupled with ongoing professional development and support for content-area teachers. Research shows that writing is an essential skill for success in and beyond the school setting. Research further indicates that writing plays an important role in student…

The purpose of this study was to examine 4 early writing measures used to monitor the early writing progress of 1st-grade students. We administered the measures to 23 1st-grade students biweekly for a total of 16 weeks. We obtained 3-min samples and conducted analyses for each 1-min increment. We scored samples using 2 different methods: correct…

Background: While numerous articles on Criterion® have been published and its validity evidence has accumulated, test users need to obtain relevant validity evidence for their local context and develop their own validity argument. This paper aims to provide validity evidence for the interpretation and use of Criterion® for assessing second…

An interest in writing practices in the state of Kansas led to a statewide survey of middle school teachers to examine key writing practices and issues. Questions focused on teacher preparation, beliefs, self-efficacy, and sense of responsibility to teach writing; use of evidence-based writing practices; the role of assessment; technology; types…

Advancements in technology have greatly influenced how students write, the ways they interact with readers, and the genres they create. In order to reflect real-world writing behaviors in the assessment setting and to be able to generalize test-takers' performance from the assessment to their true writing ability, the current study investigated…

Language immersion programs are becoming more available as a form of school choice in both private and public education in the United States and beyond. While there is research on the benefits of immersion education regarding overall intelligence, there is still much skepticism as to why parents would place their child in an immersion program vs.…

The five studies presented in this special issue offer unique evidence, analyses, and theoretical rationales for assessment tasks that involve writing in reference to information from source material with substantial content. I review the five studies in respect to five "promises" and five "perils," concluding that, collectively, the promises were…

This article reports the lexical diversity of summaries written by experts and test takers in an empirical study and then interrogates the (in)congruity between the conceptualisations of "summary" and "summarize" in the literature of educational research and the operationalization of summarization tasks in three international…

The aim of this study was to analyze whether children with and without difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or both differed in alphabet writing when using a keyboard. The total sample consisted of 1,333 children from Grades 1 through 3. Scores on the spelling and handwriting factors from the "Early Grade Writing Assessment" (Jiménez,…

This study examined whether decoding and linguistic comprehension abilities, broadly defined by the Simple View of Reading, in grade 1 each uniquely predicted the grade 6 writing performance of English-speaking children (n = 76) who were educated bilingually in both English their first language and French, a second language. Prediction was made…

The adoption of Common Core State Standards by many states prompted the development of new standardized writing assessments. A limited number of studies investigated the predictive ability of curriculum-based measurements (CBMs) as related to state assessments in writing, and none have analyzed the Mississippi Assessment Program (MAP) for writing.…

Drawing upon archival materials, I describe the history, design, and assessment of literacy tests from early 20th century New York state. Practitioners working with these early standardized writing tests grappled with tensions created by public Nativist sentiment, the legislation of "literacy," and calls to score the tests in…

Typically, English language proficiency tests yield multiple scores--usually for each of the four traditional language domains. In order to maximize the usefulness of test scores, they may need to be accompanied by information concerning how they complement one another. Using self-assessments by some 2300 TOEIC test takers, this study aimed to…

This mixed-methods research was carried out to investigate the effect of screencast video feedback on the writing of freshmen, studying academic writing course at a university in Egypt, and explore their perception towards receiving screencast feedback. Two classes of 63 students were chosen to participate in this study and were assigned into two…