Written feedback and scoring of sixth-grade girls' and boys' narrative and persuasive writing

Abstract

This study examined the possible gender differences in teachers' scoring and written feedback on two narrative and two persuasive writing samples sent to 108 grade six teachers throughout one Canadian province. Participating teachers read a narrative and a persuasive piece of writing from one boy, and a narrative and persuasive piece written by one girl. The four papers were credited to a male author for some teachers and to a female author for others. The teachers evaluated the writing using the provincial scoring guides for narrative and persuasive writing. They also wrote comments and/or indicated needed edits and revisions on the piece of writing, providing the same kind of feedback to the student writers that they would provide to their own students. A two-way ANOVA was used to compare the scores by the teacher’s gender and the identified gender of the writer for each of the four papers. There were significant differences between scores assigned to female and male writers on particular papers within specific scoring categories. Nevertheless, teachers’ ratings of the writing showed no consistent patterns privileging female or male writers. Additionally, female and male teachers’ scores were not significantly different for three of the four writing samples. The persuasive papers overall were scored higher than the narrative papers. With one exception, the highest scores within each of the four scoring categories were assigned to papers whose writers were identified as boys. Teachers scored two papers higher when the student writer’s perceived gender matched their own (same-sex appreciation). Their scoring demonstrated the opposite effect (same-sex depreciation) for the other two papers.