Examining the Relationship between Reading and Writing Student Expectations as Tested on STAAR in Fourth and Seventh Grade
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (Ed.D)
Department
Curriculum and Instruction
Date of Award
Spring 2019
Abstract
In many schools in America, reading and writing are taught as separate entities within the course of an academic day (Grabe & Zhang, 2013; Parodi, 2007). Instead, research indicates that “Teachers should exploit the potentiality of teaching and practicing reading and writing together, starting from local cohesion resources to different text organizations” (Parodi, 2007, p. 14). There are common basic strategies used by both readers and writers (Mason, Davison, Hammer, Miller, & Glutting, 2013; Parodi, 2007). Lessons should be deliberately planned so that reading and writing are intertwined. Readers and writers must have the same knowledge base and functional understanding of the multifaceted roles of language and its praxis to be proficient at comprehension and creation (Mason et al., 2013). This quantitative non-experimental study was conducted to examine the nature of the relationship between reading and writing variables by student expectations as defined by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in reading and student expectations as defined by TEKS in writing. The researcher used a canonical correlation analysis method with archival student data from the fourth- and seventh-grade State of Texas Academic Assessment of Readiness (STAAR) scores obtained from the district administration of a suburban school district for school years 2012–2013, 2013–2014, and 2014–2015. The researcher used 2 purposeful sampling groups of students: 4th-grade students from three elementary feeder schools and seventh-grade students from the junior high school linked as the feeder school for the three elementary schools. The participants of this study were selected from the 2012–2013, 2013–2014, and 2014–2015 STAAR archival data. The 4th-grade participants come from 3 different elementary schools within 1 suburban school district. Fourth- and 7th-grade students’ scores on the reading and writing STAAR tests were used in this study. Findings of this research confirm and support previous research showing reading and writing skills are strongly related and should be taught reciprocally. There were numerous reading student expectations that strongly correlated with most writing student expectations in both 4th- and 7th-grade. Reading and writing on their own are each independently only 1 element of the complex, constructive processes of discourse. In both 4th- and 7th-grade for all 3 years tested, with the full model representing all tested student expectations, there is a strong statistical significance with the variance shared between the variable sets. For 4th-grade in the 2012–2013 testing year there was a 74%, shared variance; in the 2013–2014 testing year, there was a 77% shared variance; and in the 2014–2015 testing year, there was a 76% shared variance. For 7th-grade in the 2012–2013 testing year, there was an 82%, shared variance; in the 2013–2014 testing year, there was a 79% shared variance; and in the 2014–2015 testing year, there was an 86% shared variance.
Advisor
Susan Szabo
Subject Categories
Education | Reading and Language
Recommended Citation
Ivy, Mechelle Lavon, "Examining the Relationship between Reading and Writing Student Expectations as Tested on STAAR in Fourth and Seventh Grade" (2019). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 389.
https://digitalcommons.tamuc.edu/etd/389
