مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Elementary Teachers’ Views on Evaluating Works of Creative Writing

Abstract :

Creative writing is an engaging process for students, taking boredom and simplicity out of writing practices. In this process, students express their feelings and opinions freely, without any pressure or being judged. However, evaluation of these pieces of works by the teachers is another important part of creative writing. The aim of this study is to identify elementary 4th and 5th grade teachers’ views on evaluating creative writing works produced by students. Case study that is used in qualitative research, and consequently single holistic case study was employed. In identifying the sample of the study, critical case sampling was used. The data were gathered from teachers working at 18 elementary schools having middle socio-economic level in Izmir city center. The participants were 69 teachers (female=42; male=27). A semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers was used in the data gathering process. Then, the data were transcribed and content analysis was conducted. After a detailed analysis by both researchers, the codes of the data were identified. The reliability of the codes identified was calculated using an agreement percentage. This percentage was 0.82 for the first question, and 0.69 for the second question. According to the findings of the study, most of the teachers do not have necessary knowledge when it comes to evaluating works of creative writing. As a result, they mostly use the usual writing criteria in evaluating creative writing