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Writing assessments often consist of students responding to multiple prompts, which are judged by more than one rater. To establish the reliability of these assessments, there exist different methods to disentangle variation due to prompts and raters, including classical test theory, Many Facet Rasch Measurement (MFRM), and Generalizability Theory (G-Theory). Each of these methods defines a standard error of measurement (SEM), which is a quantity that summarizes the overall variability of student scores. However, less attention has been given to conditional SEMs (CSEM), which expresses the variability for scores of individual students. This tutorial summarizes how to obtain CSEMs for each of the three methods, illustrates the concepts on real writing assessment data, and provides computational resources for CSEMs including an example of a specification file for the FACETS program for MFRM and R code to compute CSEMs for G-theory.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the move by governments worldwide to cancel in-class instruction and move to emergency remote instruction in March and April of 2020 created an unprecedented disruption in children's education. As the COVID-19 pandemic took form and continued to impact education in the following 2020/2021 academic year, multiple concerns were raised about possible negative effects on students' learning. The current longitudinal replication study examined this proposition for second-grade students in Norway. In a previous investigation (Skar et al. Journal of Educational Psychology 114:1553-1566, 2022), we found that scores for quality of writing, handwriting fluency, and attitude toward writing of first-grade children tested immediately after emergency remote instruction ended in the Spring of 2020 (During COVID-19 cohort) were lower than the scores of first-grade students from the same schools tested a year earlier before the start of the pandemic (Before COVID-19 cohort). In the present study, we compared the scores for the During COVID-19 cohort (333 girls, 308 boys) on these same writing measures 1 year later at the end of second grade to a During COVID-19 cohort of second-graders (888 girls, 780 boys) from the same schools tested 2 years earlier before the start of the pandemic. The initial negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on first-grade students' writing observed by Skar et al. (Journal of Educational Psychology 114:1553-1566, 2022) was no longer evident 1 year later at the end of second grade in the current study.

The current study examined how Chinese characters were taught by primary grade teachers in Macao during online instruction resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., emergency remote instruction). A random sample of 313 first to third grade teachers in public and private schools were surveyed about their instructional practices. Most teachers surveyed (72%) reported they taught a lesson about Chinese characters once every 3-4 weeks during emergency remote instruction, and 83% and 81% of teachers indicated they assigned homework for writing and reading characters, respectively, at the same rate. On average, they reportedly spent 97 min per week teaching students to write, read, and understand the meaning of new characters, devoting equal time to each of these skills. They also indicated students practiced writing and reading characters in class for 40 min per week. They further noted students were expected to spend 35 min a day practicing writing and reading characters for homework. While teachers reportedly used a variety of instructional practices for teaching characters (M = 30.38), the typical teacher applied less than one-half (N = 64) of practices assessed. Teachers reported use of asynchronous (online learning activities which can be completed at other times) and synchronous (real-time videos and audio/text) teaching methods and perceptions of adequacy of technical support predicted reported teaching practices. The findings from this study raise questions about the teaching of Chinese characters in Macao during emergency remote instruction.

Until children can produce letters quickly and accurately, it is assumed that handwriting disrupts and limits the quality of their text. This investigation is the largest study to date (2596 girls, 2354 boys) assessing the association between handwriting fluency and writing quality. We tested whether handwriting fluency made a statistically unique contribution to predicting primary grade students' writing quality on a functional writing task, after variance due to attitude towards writing, students' language background (L1, L2, bilingual), gender, grade, and nesting due to class and school were first controlled. Handwriting fluency accounted for a statistically significant 7.4% of the variance in the writing quality of primary grade students. In addition, attitude towards writing, language background, grade and gender each uniquely predicted writing quality. Finally, handwriting fluency increased from one grade to the next, girls had faster handwriting than boys, and gender differences increased across grades. An identical pattern of results were observed for writing quality. Directions for future research and writing practices are discussed.

This study aimed to investigate the predictability of writing development and if scores on a writing test in the first weeks of first grade accurately predict students' placements into different proficiency groups. Participants were 832 first grade students in Norway. Writing proficiency was measured twice, at the start and at the end of first grade (time 1 and time 2, respectively). Multilevel linear regression analysis showed that writing proficiency measures at time 1 were significant predictors of writing proficiency at time 2. The results also showed that measures at time 1 could identify students running the risk of not meeting expectations with high precision. However, the results also revealed a substantial proportion of false positives. The results are interpreted and discussed from a formative writing assessment perspective.

A sample of 1049 Norwegian teachers in grades 1-3 were surveyed about how they taught writing as well as their preparation and efficacy to do so. Although there was moderate variability in their response to survey items, most teachers provided students with a multi-faceted writing program. Teachers indicated students typically spent 20 min a day writing, and they were assigned various types of writing over the course of the school year. The average teacher applied numerous instructional practices frequently to teach writing skills, support students' writing, provide students with feedback, and conference with them about writing. Less commonly, teachers taught planning and revising, promoted students' motivation for writing, and applied evaluation data to adjust writing instruction. While teachers were not generally positive about their preservice preparation to teach writing, they believed that their inservice preparation was adequate. They were slightly to moderately positive about their efficacy to teach writing. Teachers' beliefs about preparation and efficacy as well as their use of data-driven practices each uniquely predicted teachers' reported writing practices. Recommendations for future research were offered.

This paper reports findings from a project called "The National Panel of Raters" (NPR) that took place within a writing test programme in Norway (2010-2016). A recent research project found individual differences between the raters in the NPR. This paper reports results from an explorative follow up-study where 63 NPR members were surveyed with 23 items that were dilemma-like in the sense that deviating from the NPR rules would follow another--but socially acceptable--rationale. Four NPR members participated in a follow-up interview in which they motivated why they had agreed or disagreed with certain items. The results indicate two distinctly different stances toward rating work, with one stance threatening the validity of the scoring process.

This article reports consequences for student writing quality based on a long-term professional learning project. Project teachers, representing all school subjects in grades 3-7, were presented with a writing construct, 'Wheel of Writing', and norms of expectation for writing proficiency. Participating teachers used the writing construct and norms as a basis for writing instruction and writing assessment. The project was conducted in 24 schools across Norway. 3088 students from 20 project schools participated. Two hundred and thirty three students from 4 schools were used as a comparison group. The investigation showed that students in primary school improved their writing quality significantly. Students in lower secondary school did not. However, there was substantial variation in writing quality effects between schools, classes, and individual students. For instance at a number of schools, project students from lower secondary school improved their writing quality significantly. The article discusses potential explanations of the effects.

"The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing" by R. Horowitz is a comprehensive handbook that explores various aspects of writing. The book covers topics such as the history of writing, the connection between speaking and writing, cognitive processes in writing, and the use of digital tools for writing. The reviewer praises the overall quality of the handbook and highlights specific chapters on digital writing, intercultural rhetoric research, everyday writing, and writing in the sciences and engineering. The reviewer suggests that future editions could include additional chapters on text quality assessment, research methods in writing research, and the future of writing in the age of AI. [Extracted from the article]

This article addresses the basis for the development of the screening tool Norwegian Early Writers Signal (NEWS). The aim of the study was to develop a tool for teachers in grades 1-3 to identify student texts in 'the Warning Zone', i.e., texts that signal insufficient overall text quality associated with students in need of extra instructional support. Text norms were elicited from a panel of 14 experts in a standardsetting seminar. The standard-setting procedure was a benchmarking-like approach in which panelists chose texts that according to their judgement were in the Warning Zone. Additionally, in an online questionnaire, data on experts' expectation growth pattern for eight text quality aspects in grades 1-3 were collected. Furthermore, student texts in the Warning Zone were marked and then included in the screening tool to concretize the norms, showing that texts in this zone can take several shapes. The article discusses what steps can be taken to further validate and implement the NEWS tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated audience awareness characteristics in elementary school students' texts. To achieve this goal, we used a cross-sectional study design and sampled texts from 90 students in grades 1-3 (N = 270). These texts formed a corpus that was qualitatively analyzed by the research team. We used descriptive statistics to identify audience awareness patterns. Based on previous research, we expected to find considerable variation within and between grades. Therefore, we posed the following two research questions: (1) What characterizes audience awareness within grades 1-3? and (2) How does audience awareness develop between grades 1-3? We found that students used various rhetorical moves oriented toward the audience, such as greetings and closings, meta-text, explanations, and justifications. The results indicated that the students exhibited several characteristics related to audience awareness in all three grades. However, the variation within the grades was significant, while the variation between the grades was less pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]