The Rubric for Scientific Writing

Abstract

A major challenge of assessing students' science writing derives from the need to simultaneously consider two criteria – scientific argumentation and rhetorical form. This challenge is confounded by a lack of standardized measures for scientific writing. Therefore, this study aimed to create and validate the rubric for scientific writing (RSW), which can be used to provide both formative and summative evaluations of students' scientific writing. Three science teachers and three English/language arts teachers independently used the rubric to score 75 authentic science writing samples from middle and high school classes. The teachers also participated in a focus group to provide in-depth feedback on the strengths, weaknesses, and practical classroom applications of the rubric. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the RSW produces valid and reliable scores of proper scientific argumentation and English rhetoric, which would allow future researchers and teachers to examine how instruction and interventions impact these two aspects of scientific writing.