The Critical Thinking Analytic Rubric (CTAR): Investigating intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of a scoring mechanism for critical thinking performance assessments

The purpose of this study was to investigate the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the Critical Thinking Analytic Rubric (CTAR). The CTAR is composed of 6 rubric categories: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and disposition. To investigate inter-rater reliability, two trained raters scored four sets of performance-based student work samples derived from a pilot study and subsequent larger study. The two raters also blindly scored a subset of student work samples a second time to investigate intra-rater reliability. Participants in this study were high school seniors enrolled in a college preparation course. Both raters showed acceptable levels of intra-rater reliability (α ≥ 0.70) in five of the six rubric categories. One rater showed poor consistency (α = 0.56) for the analysis category of the rubric, while the other rater showed excellent consistency (α = 0.91) for the same category suggesting the need for further training of the former rater. The results of the inter-rater reliability investigation demonstrate acceptable levels of consistency (α ≥ 0.70) in all rubric categories. This investigation demonstrated that the CTAR can be used by raters to score student work samples in a consistent manner.     

On Poetry and Type

This personal essay examines a poet’s relationship to the writing process through reflections on formative experiences of the mechanics of writing – on a typewriter, on computer or by hand – as well as the ways in which a writerly identity might be constructed or adopted.     

Culturally responsive teaching in the context of mathematics: a grounded theory case study

In this grounded theory case study, four interconnected, foundational cornerstones of culturally responsive mathematics teaching (CRMT), communication, knowledge, trust/relationships, and constant reflection/revision, were systematically unearthed to develop an initial working theory of CRMT that directly informs classroom practice. These cornerstones were found to interact in unique ways. Results have implications for teachers of mathematics who aim to become more culturally responsive, mathematics teacher educators and supervisors, and school administrators who seek to promote equity in mathematics.     

“Each word shows how you love me”: The social literacy practice of children’s letter writing (1780–1860)

This article draws on hundreds of letters that formed German children’s correspondence with their parents, other relatives, teachers and friends, written mostly between the 1780s and 1850s. Through this study, we see the part literacy played in transformations of bourgeois childhood in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. The article further investigates how children used letters as a means of learning sociability and building relationships within kinship networks. Historians of education have sometimes treated children’s writing as secondary to more authoritative records. Yet we miss something important about the history of literacy education if we disregard children’s writing or use it only superficially. This article considers the genre of children’s letter writing, exploring the conventions and typical subjects which contributed to the social purpose of correspondence. Letter writing is examined as a paedagogic exercise, including the preoccupation with the medium which filled children’s letters and evidence of instruction in letter writing. It demonstrates that letters fostered the participation of middle- and upper-class children in household affairs, kinship networks and cultural spheres connected through school friends and parents’ acquaintances from very young ages. Children’s correspondence documents a lifelong process in the making of class cultures and forging of social ties.     

Where the private meets the public: Results of a survey of library professionals’ observed student use of academic library spaces for prayer

Abstract

Reports of college students using the library for spiritual practices, including prayer and meditation, consist mainly of anecdotal observations, news stories, or press releases about the creation of such spaces within academic libraries. Driven by their own experiences with students using library spaces for prayer, the authors examined how prevalent this was across US academic institutions. Using a large-scale national survey, this study found library professionals observe a wide range of student prayer behavior in a variety of library spaces, regardless of institutional or campus demographics. The results provide academic libraries with evidence to support accommodating students’ spiritual needs in library spaces.     

Scolding John Q.: Articulating a Normative Relationship between Politics and Entertainment

The 2002 hostage drama John Q. triggered a discussion among journalists, the public, and the policy community about the proper relationship between politics and entertainment. In this debate the criteria for good journalism and good political discourse were frequently invoked to evaluate this Hollywood film. This discussion, which spilled out of the film criticism pages into news and commentary pages, shows how public-sphere models of political discourse are privileged even though they may not be a good fit for fictional media. John Q.’s success in triggering public discussion and awareness about health policy issues seems to illustrate DeLuca & Peeples’s (2002) DeLuca, K. M. and Peeples, J. 2002. From public sphere to public screen: Democracy, activism, and the “violence” of Seattle. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19(2): 125–151. [CROSSREF][Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] claim that the “public screen” is a more useful metaphor for thinking about politics than the public sphere (Habermas, 1989 Habermas, J. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]). John Q. seemed to particularly raise the ire of critics because of its unambiguous critique of domestic policy and its implicit suggestion that collective solutions are needed.     

Credibility in Context: How Uncivil Online Commentary Affects News Credibility

In the new media environment, hard news stories are no longer found solely in the “A” section of the paper or on the front page of a news Web site. They are now distributed widely, appearing in contexts as disparate as a partisan blog or your own e-mail inbox, forwarded by a friend. In this study, we investigate how the credibility of a news story is affected by the context in which it appears. Results of an experiment show a news story embedded in an uncivil partisan blog post appears more credible in contrast. Specifically, a blogger's incivility highlights the relative credibility of the newspaper article. We also find that incivility and partisan disagreement in an adjacent blog post produce stronger correlations between ratings of news and blog credibility. These findings suggest that news story credibility is affected by context and that these context effects can have surprising benefits for news organizations. Findings are consistent with predictions of social judgment theory.     

Media Literacy Messages and Hostile Media Perceptions: Processing of Nonpartisan Versus Partisan Political Information

Partisans are poor judges of news content, rating neutral content as biased against their views (the hostile media perception) and forgiving biased content when it favors their side. This study tests whether a short news media literacy public service announcement (PSA) appearing before political programming can influence credibility and hostility ratings of the program and program host. Our findings suggest that a media literacy PSA can be effective, but its impact depends on the position of the news program and on the political ideology of the viewers. In this case, the media literacy PSA only influenced conservatives’ evaluations of the political program, improving perceptions of a neutral or congruent (conservative) host while further depressing ratings of an incongruent (liberal) host. Liberals’ evaluations of the program were unaffected by the PSA. Implications for media literacy messaging and information processing are discussed.     

Fake News,Special Libraries and What It Means to Be American

This column is written by column editor Ilana Stonebraker and guest columnist Emily Johnson. Ilana Stonebraker is Business Information Specialist and Assistant Professor at Purdue University. Emily Johnson is the Middle School Librarian and Library Coordinator at Daystar Academy in Beijing, China. They both received an MSI from the University of Michigan. This column focuses on the “fake news” phenomenon and how it affects special libraries.