Essays as Valid Measures of Learning in Middle-School Science Classes

Abstract

Students with learning disabilities often participate in middle-school science and social studies classes. Current conceptions of achievement in content classes focus on use of complex thinking and problem-solving skills rather than acquisition of specific factual information. Increasingly, learning is measured with performance assessments that require a production response, often, an essay. This study explored the construct validity of essay tasks as measures of learning in content classes. Students in two sections of a seventh-grade general science class wrote essays in response to prompts designed to elicit use of the intellectual operation evaluation. They also wrote a compare-contrast essay and took traditional end-of-chapter criterion-referenced tests. All measures were tied to specific two-week units of instruction presented by the students' regular science teacher. Results indicated that essay tasks may be highly sensitive to both the content of instruction and the design of the prompt. The validity of essays as measures of content learning likely relates more to the goals of instruction and the desired outcomes for assessment than the task itself. Implications for the use of essay tasks as measures of learning in content classes that include students with learning disabilites are discussed.