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Re-imagining narrative writing and assessment- a post-NAPLAN craft-based rubric for creative writing335.45 kB
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Re-imagining narrative writing and assessment: A post-NAPLAN craft-based rubric for creative writing
Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol.45(1), pp.33-48
2022
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
According to creative writing pedagogies academic Susanne Gannon (2019) and the Federal government-commissioned NAPLAN review (McGaw et al., 2020), NAPLAN has restricted how writing is taught in secondary schools. A NAPLAN-influenced structural approach to teaching writing has subsumed the development of imaginative capacity. Given the considerable negative criticism of the NAPLAN writing tests, including the negative impact it has had on the teaching of writing, there is a need, we argue, for a fit-for-purpose assessment rubric that assesses creative writing. In a ten-week project, teaching creative writing with three classes of Year 9 students in Steiner schools, we evaluated the use of a novel creative writing rubric, created by published creative writers and lecturers (the second and third authors), to assess the students’ creative writing pre- and post-program. Consecutively, the NAPLAN narrative criteria was also used to assess the same writing scripts as a point of comparison. The creative writing criteria privileged craft-based approaches to imaginative writing compared to the function and form-focused criteria of NAPLAN. Statistical analyses of the reliability and validity of the creative writing rubric showed that the construct can be scored with a significant moderate level of reliably by different raters (r= 0.5-0.7; ICC = 0.6). Internal consistency reliability of the criteria was found to be excellent (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.94). Content validity of the instrument was found to be strong (r=0.7-0.9) and significant. Unexpectedly, analyses for concurrent validity showed that the instrument correlates strongly (r=0.7) and significantly with the NAPLAN narrative rubric, suggesting some overlap, but not parity with the NAPLAN assessment. We found students’ post-project writing improved in all aspects according to the creative writing rubric, with a statistically significant improvement in students’ structural elements and presentation and group average improvement approaching significance in two other criteria: words, sentence and voice and characters and context (effect sizes d=0.3-0.4). However, there were no significant improvements in the students’ post-program writing according to the NAPLAN criteria, possibly because the NAPLAN narrative task criteria did not capture student development of a unique writing style or individual ‘voice’ or other craft-based standards of proficiency measured by the creative writing rubric. Given the validity and reliability evidence, we conclude that the creative writing rubric is a fit-for-purpose guide to school-based learning and assessment of creative writing.
Details
- Title
- Re-imagining narrative writing and assessment: A post-NAPLAN craft-based rubric for creative writing
- Authors
- Michael Carey (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Education and Tertiary AccessShelley Davidow Dr (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Education and Tertiary AccessPaul Williams Dr (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Publication details
- Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol.45(1), pp.33-48
- Publisher
- Australian Literacy Educators' Association
- Date published
- 2022
- DOI
- 10.1007/s44020-022-00004-4
- ISSN
- 1839-4728; 1038-1562
- Copyright note
- (c) The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries; Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Education and Tertiary Access; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; Engage Research Lab; Sustainability Research Cluster
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99575008802621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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