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<p>Teacher judgments of student achievement influence how effectively students learn and how teachers organize their lessons. Teachers’ diagnostic competence is therefore an important field of research for subject-specific teaching and learning. This study investigates how pre-service English teachers assess complex learner essays using assessment rubrics. In particular, it explores whether instructional videos are effective in minimizing distortion effects in essay assessment by raising participants’ awareness about them. English pre-service teachers (<italic>N</italic> = 81) in Switzerland and Germany assessed four argumentative essays of varying lexical and overall quality. Prior to the assessment task, the treatment group saw a ten-minute video about how to assess vocabulary, while the control group watched a video about general aspects of assessment. In their judgments, pre-service teachers recognized higher/lower overall quality and higher/lower lexical quality. More importantly, the results showed significant effects of the variation in lexical quality on other text characteristics, indicating halo effects. These effects were similar in both groups, suggesting that the video instruction on its own was no safeguard against distortion effects in essay assessment. Implications for teacher education and further research are discussed.</p>
</abstract>

Teacher judgments of student achievement influence how effectively students learn and how teachers organize their lessons. Teachers’ diagnostic competence is therefore an important field of research for subject-specific teaching and learning. This study investigates how pre-service English teachers assess complex learner essays using assessment rubrics. In particular, it explores whether instructional videos are effective in minimizing distortion effects in essay assessment by raising participants’ awareness about them. English pre-service teachers (N = 81) in Switzerland and Germany assessed four argumentative essays of varying lexical and overall quality. Prior to the assessment task, the treatment group saw a ten-minute video about how to assess vocabulary, while the control group watched a video about general aspects of assessment. In their judgments, pre-service teachers recognized higher/lower overall quality and higher/lower lexical quality. More importantly, the results showed significant effects of the variation in lexical quality on other text characteristics, indicating halo effects. These effects were similar in both groups, suggesting that the video instruction on its own was no safeguard against distortion effects in essay assessment. Implications for teacher education and further research are discussed.

Can an instructional video increase the quality of English teachers’ assessment of learner essays?

School of Education, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern

Ph.D. candidate in Educational Sciences at University of Basel

Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at Kiel University

professor of educational psychology at the Institute for Psychology of Learning and Instruction at Kiel University

Research in Subject-matter Teaching and Learning (RISTAL)

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Teacher judgments of student achievement influence how effectively students learn and how teachers organize their lessons. Teachers’ diagnostic competence is...

Can an instructional video increase the quality of English teachers’ assessment of learner essays?

Pubblicato online: 14 giu 2022

Pagine: 140 - 161

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23770/rt1829

Parole chiave
Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL), Argumentative Essay, Assessment, Teacher education, Instructional video

© 2019 Stefan D. Keller et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Can an instructional video increase the quality of English teachers’ assessment of learner essays?

Pubblicato online: 14 giu 2022

Pagine: 140 - 161

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23770/rt1829

Parole chiaveTeaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL), Argumentative Essay, Assessment, Teacher education, Instructional video

© 2019 Stefan D. Keller et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Parole chiave
Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL), Argumentative Essay, Assessment, Teacher education, Instructional video