Program

Education Doctorate

Number of Pages

253

Year Approved

2021

First Advisor

Paulson, Patricia

Second Reader

Cindy Hansen, Sandra Pettingell

Abstract

This mixed-methods case study explored whether the write-converse-write (WCW) strategy impacted students’ science conceptual understanding, as evidenced by their writing, along with the teacher and student perceptions regarding the strategy. The study was conducted in a small school district in northern California with three eighth-grade teachers and their students (n=138). Students were given several articles to read followed by a writing prompt. After reading the articles students responded to the prompt; the following day they discussed their writing sample with a partner. After receiving feedback from their partner, the students completed a second writing sample followed by taking the student survey. The student survey consisted of six questions: three Likert scale questions (quantitative) and three open-ended questions (qualitative). Teachers used a rubric to score the student's first and second writing samples and then completed a teacher survey. The scores from students’ writing samples indicated that students’ understanding of science content increased following the peer discussion. Additionally, students’ second scores for their evidence and reasoning showed significant increases, while their claim scores were not significantly different. The qualitative data collected from the surveys suggested that students and teachers found the WCW strategy to be beneficial for student learning. The findings suggest that the WCW strategy could be a valuable tool for scaffolding student learning and writing in the science classroom.

Degree Name

Education Doctorate

Document Type

Doctoral dissertation

Download

Share

COinS