Improving the accuracy of middle school students' self-assessment, peer assessment, and

191 Pages·2017·2.36 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Popelka

University of Louisville
ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
12-2015
Improving the accuracy of middle school students'
self-assessment, peer assessment, and mathematics
achievement.
Elizabeth Popelka
University of Louisville
Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd
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Recommended Citation
Popelka, Elizabeth, "Improving the accuracy of middle school students' self-assessment, peer assessment, and mathematics
achievement." (2015).Electronic Theses and Dissertations.Paper 2324.
https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2324
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IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’
SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS
ACHIEVEMENT

By

Elizabeth Popelka
B.A., University of Louisville, 1999
M.A.T., University of Louisville, 2006

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
College of Education and Human Development of the University of Louisville
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction

Department of Teaching and Learning
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

December 2015

IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’
SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS
ACHIEVEMENT

By

Elizabeth Popelka
B.A., University of Louisville, 1999
M.A.T., University of Louisville, 2006

A Dissertation Approved on

November 23, 2015

by the following Dissertation Committee:

______________________________________
Dissertation Director
Karen S. Karp

______________________________________
Elizabeth Todd Brown

______________________________________
Maggie B. McGatha

______________________________________
Jeffrey C. Valentine

______________________________________
Robert N. Ronau

ii
DEDICATION
In loving memory of my mother,
Joy Mae Popelka,
the first teacher I ever knew, who instilled in me an appreciation for education and the
wonderful places it could take me.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I began this journey to my doctorate because I love being a teacher and welcome
every opportunity to enhance my practice. Having learned so much from my coursework
and gained so much from my research, and before I can finally give back to the field and
make my own contribution, I am thrilled to recognize those who made my academic
experience so meaningful.
I am forever grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their
contributions to this study and to my overall growth as an educator. As my Rank 1
program advisor and professor during my early teaching years, Dr. Maggie McGatha laid
an appreciation of formative assessment that would become the foundation for this
dissertation. Over my coursework and our collaboration on multiple projects, Dr.
Elizabeth Todd Brown has been an amazing teacher and mentor, delivering positive—yet
honest—pieces of advice that have guided me through my academic experience. Before
studying with Dr. Jeffrey Valentine, I had been lucky to muddle through my statistics
classes. I appreciate so much his patience with my lack of background knowledge, and I
am awed by how much he has taught me about applying statistics to realistic situations.
For everything I know about research design and advanced statistical analysis, I must
credit Dr. Robert Ronau. The number of hours he has logged in helping me construct and
fully grasp the implications of this study is so high I had to quit estimating. Without his
efforts, this dissertation would not have been possible.
Lastly, I would like to thank my program advisor and dissertation chair, Dr. Karen
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Karp. Because her reputation precedes her, I was flattered when she advised me during
my Rank 1 program to pursue a Ph.D. Because of her famously high standards, I was
elated when she agreed to be my advisor and dissertation chair. The last several years
have produced a number of professional and personal ups and downs that drew out the
dissertation process for longer than either of us had planned or would have liked. Because
she is not only an incredible teacher and mentor but also a dear friend, Dr. Karp was
incredibly sympathetic to and supportive of me even as the length and duration of my
dissertation became a source of hardship for her. I am a better student, researcher,
teacher, and person, because of Dr. Karp. I am honored to join her impressive list of other
“Ph.D. children.”
This project truly took a village, and I was lucky to have the most nurturing one I
could have hoped for: my colleagues, friends, and “family” at Westport Middle School. I
am grateful for the school administrators who provided me access to classes and, most
especially, to the fellow teachers who helped validate my rubric validation, examined
assessments for validity, relinquished their students to me, and acted as a sounding board
when I needed to talk out ideas and frustrations. The statistical analysis required for this
study was, at first, beyond the scope of my comprehension, and certain university faculty
went over and beyond to help me understand it and carry it out with confidence and ease.
I am forever indebted to the following people, all of whom contributed directly to this
dissertation: Dr. Christopher Rakes, Dr. Staci Eddleman, Jodie Zeller, Sagan Massey,
Kristyn Williams, James Daniels, Lauren Thomas, Dave Thomas, Meagan Anderson,
Heather Weis, Jennifer Napier, Emily Hixon, Stacey Hubbard, Torri Martin, Sharon
Klump, Laura Viergutz, Jonathan Lippman, Sarah Yost, Melissa Shearon, Dr. Elizabeth
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Best, Judith Reader, and Mark Dumouchelle.
Talking of strategies to survive the dissertation process, a wise woman, Dr. Kate
Grindon, urged, “Find your tribe.” She was totally right: Nobody can understand this
process like someone who has gone through it. I could not ask for better friends and
Ph.D. sisters than Victoria Miller Bennett, Shannon Stone, and Leah Dix White. And
neither could I ask for a more invaluable “big” Ph.D. sister, Dr. Sarah Bush.
Finally, all the pages in the world cannot supply adequate words to thank my
amazing husband, Ray Brown. In order for me to finish this seemingly never-ending
process, he picked up an unbelievable amount of family responsibility, displayed infinite
patience and support for my goals, sacrificed countless hours of quality couple and family
time, and continued to love me even though, these last couple of years, I’ve had many
moments when I was very unlovable. He is my biggest booster and my best friend. I
cannot imagine this journey, academic and otherwise, without him.
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ABSTRACT
IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’
SELF-ASSESSMENT, PEER ASSESSMENT, AND MATHEMATICS
ACHIEVEMENT
Elizabeth Popelka
November 23, 2015
Despite the documented advantages of formative assessment (FA) strategies in
elevating student achievement, much of the relevant research is dated and undermined by
questionable design and inattention to K-12 settings. In order to fill these voids, this
quantitative study tested the effect of a self- and peer-assessment-training instructional
sequence, developed with recommendations from past research and employing explicitly
described assessment measures and criteria, on middle school students’ assessment
accuracy and subsequent mathematics achievement. The researcher hypothesized a
correlation between measurable growth in assessment accuracy and gains in achievement,
as well as a reciprocal effect of self- and peer-assessment ability.
The subjects for this study were drawn from the population of 7th-grade students
at a low-achieving urban middle school in a metropolitan area in the Midwest. The
students were convenience- and purposive-selected and assigned to treatment and control
groups; the treatment group contained 39 students and the control group contained 41
students. Data were collected before and after 10 hour-long self- and peer-assessment
training sessions, which were conducted with the treatment group over a 3-week period.
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This study had an independent variable with two groups, treatment and no
treatment, and three dependent variables, achievement, students’ ability to accurately
self-assess, and students’ ability to accurately peer-assess. All variables were assessed
numerically and analyzed using a multivariate statistical procedure. Statistical tests
revealed a positive effect of peer- and self-assessment training on students’ mathematical
achievement and ability to accurately self-assess. The intervention did not increase the
accuracy of students’ peer assessments, contradicting the foundational conjecture that
self- and peer-assessment ability would rise commensurately. Nevertheless, the gains in
self-assessment accuracy and student achievement produced by the intervention indicate
that teachers should adopt assessment training in classrooms. Ultimately, this study
contributes a clear and demonstrably effective instructional sequence; exemplifies
successful strategy implementation; and freshly affirms the connection between student
assessment practices and achievement.
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