ERIC Number: ED191060
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1979
Pages: 35
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Field Studies Report. Evaluation of the Bay Area Writing Project. Technical Report.
Thomas, Susan; Keech, Catharine
As part of the evaluation of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), two field studies were conducted to analayze the effects of BAWP training at the school district level. In one field study, three school districts were examined to explore the conditions and context for BAWP training and to identify the resulting impact on school district programs. It was found that teachers and administrators in all three districts were enthusiastic about participating in BAWP programs and that in all three districts there had been similar changes in teacher behaviors and attitudes, student attitudes, composition curriculums, and district composition programs. The participants in the BAWP inservice programs had assumed the tasks of transferring training to other teachers, suggesting that BAWP training does perpetuate itself, but only when central direction and support are available. In the second field study, which reviewed 16 district-initiated holistic writing assessments, it was found that the research designs the districts used were weak because of the absence of comparison groups, the lack of controls, and the lack of correspondence among writing tasks. No district was systematically collecting objective test data to monitor improvement in writing skills, indicating that BAWP may need to make district administrators more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of various designs for collecting and interpreting holistic data. (Author/RL)
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Carnegie Corp. of New York, NY.
Authoring Institution: California Univ., Berkeley. School of Education.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A