Vad uppmärksammar lärare i samtal om skrivbedömning?

Svensklärares normer för beslut om summativ bedömning

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative study of Swedish teachers’ summative assessments of students’ writing in upper secondary school. Based on teacher group discussions, the study describes and analyses teachers’ expressions of norms when assessing and grading students’ writing in the subject of Swedish. Data consist of audio- and video recordings from three focus group discussions, comprising a total of 17 teachers. Topic analysis (Linell, 2001) is the method used to identify expressions of assessment norms in these discussions. The analysis reveals that these teachers’ summative assessments of students’ writing express two competing norms: a non-compensatory and a compensatory norm. The non-compensatory norm is expressed through perceptions that all text qualities must correspond to the same criteria. This means that shortcomings in texts are crucial for teachers’ summative assessments. The text qualities that primarily determine these decisions are language style and text structure. Meanwhile, the compensatory norm is expressed through perceptions that in summative aspects such as students’ age and writing instructions as well as students’ writing development and the national test must be considered. These competing assessment norms have a substantial impact on these teachers’ decisions on summative assessments. The teacher groups show significant variation in the basis for their decisions regarding summative assessment of students' writing.