Holistic scoring practices of student compositions among pre- and in-service secondary English teachers

This study targeted populations of in-service and pre-service English teachers to gain information about their grading practices of student compositions. The study focused on secondary English classrooms across rural Nebraska as revealed by a survey. A total of one-hundred and fifty in-service teachers of at least ten years standing in their current assignment and twenty-five pre-service language arts teachers of at least second semester sophomore standing admitted to a teacher education program at a Nebraska State Teacher\u27s College were invited to participate in the study. The return rate for in-service was just under fifty percent, and the pre-service (a contained population) responded at the 100 percent return rate. Comparisons of attitudes and practices regarding grading of student writing were made in and across groups. The IRA (International Reading Association) and the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), had issued a joint call to new grading procedures in 1994, and the study was designed to check on any continuing popularity of holistic scoring which denied those new concerns. Both populations agreed that holistic scoring is still wide-spread, but neither group reported receiving what was considered a proper amount of training of any ilk in the grading of compositions; in-service teachers believe far more strongly that their students understand their grading procedures than do pre-service teachers, small group work is either de-emphasized or not used due to perceived behavior problems, and many from both populations add (or would add) comments onto holistically scored papers. A substantial number from both populations also felt compelled to place percentage grades on these same compositions, if for no other reason than to satisfy district grading requirements. Many of these same respondents recognized and articulated the seeming incongruity in this instance: process writing techniques in the classroom being controlled by product grading procedures. The study suggests that a mismatch of instructional methods and grading techniques exists, particularly in regard to poststructural concerns in today\u27s composition classroom