Iterative co-evaluation with a rubric of narrative texts in Primary Education / Coevaluación iterativa con rúbrica de textos narrativos en la Educación Primaria

Abstract

This study compares two types of activities involving narrative text revision: the first one consists in a traditional evaluation by teachers and the second one involves iterative co-evaluation with a rubric. A total number of 128 Primary school learners that were randomly assigned to the two types of assessment took part in this study. They were asked to write a composition that was assessed with the assigned evaluation procedure in each case. After the evaluation process (by means of hetero-evaluation or iterative co-evaluation), the participants completely rewrote their compositions. A standardized test (PROESC: assessment of writing processes) and a rubric were applied in order to analyze the improvements in the new versions of the compositions. The narrations were also marked by four teachers, unaware of the research. The number of changes introduced by the participants in the second version of the narrations was also counted. The results show that 76% of the subjects that were assessed by means of iterative co-evaluation introduced the changes suggested by their peers as opposed to 86% of the learners in the other group that incorporated the modifications indicated by their teacher. The process of iterative co-evaluation with rubric resulted in a clear improvement in the organization and contents of the narrative texts (mainly in the description of the characters and in the story setting) while the students assessed by their teachers improved, significantly, their grammar and, above all, spelling mistakes.