Date of Award

3-30-1995

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Leadership (MAL)

Department

Leadership

Abstract

The impact of specific collaborative writing skill lessons on individual writing skills and attitudes of mainstream students in two Chaska High School English classrooms was the focus of this study. Students in the control class and the experimental class studied the same literary selections and skills; however, the process of the writing skill lessons was different. The experimental class received additional instruction in the collaborative process by learning group roles, writing collaboratively, and evaluating progress after each group skill lesson. In order to assess the impact of collaboration in the experimental class, a pretest and posttest were administered to both the control and experimental class at the beginning of the quarter and at the end of the quarter. Two readers from the English department and the author holistically scored the pretests and posttests. The experimental class written posttest scores did not significantly differ from those of the control class written posttest scores. Therefore, the collaborative writing process did not appear to have a significant impact on individual student writing skills. An attitudinal survey was administered to both classes in the middle of the quarter and at the end of the quarter; the responses were categorized and tabulated into positive, negative, and neutral remarks. The experimental class attitudinal survey responses were not significantly different from those of the control class. However, the fact that the writing skills of students in both the experimental class and the control class improved was an important finding in this study.

Identifier

SC 11.MAL.1995.Swenson.BB

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