Development of a Rubric to Evaluate the Critical Writing Skills Levels of Fourth-Grade Primary School Students

Oct 15, 2026

The study develops a rubric to evaluate the critical writing skills of fourth-grade primary students. Using a quantitative, scanning design, data were collected across rubric development stages over four weeks with 215 students from five primary schools selected by purposeful sampling. Feedback was gathered from classroom teachers, Turkish teachers, doctoral students, and basic education experts, and student critical articles were scored with the rubric’s scoring key. Reliability was tested with Cohen’s Kappa and internal consistency with Cronbach’s Alpha, confirming high agreement, validity, and reliability.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Critical writing in education

Purpose and scope of the study

Development of a Rubric to Evaluate the Critical Writing Skills Levels of Fourth-Grade Primary School Students* Tufan BİTİR1 Uşak University Erol DURAN2 Uşak University Abstract In this study, it was aimed to develop a rubric for evaluating the critical writing skills of primary school fourth-grade students. The research was designed in quantitative research method and scanning design. The study group of the research consists of 215 students studying in the fourth grade of five different primary schools determined by the purposeful sampling method, taking into account their gender and socioeconomic status. Research data were collected during the development stages of the rubric and lasted for four weeks. In this process, opinions were received from 54 classroom teachers, 12 Turkish teachers, 8 doctoral students continuing their graduate education in the field of Classroom Education and Turkish Education, and 16 academicians who are experts in the field of Basic Education. In addition, the students in the study group were asked to write critical articles and the written products were evaluated through the developed scoring key. The collected data were analyzed with a statistical program. In order to ensure internal consistency in the research, Cohen's Kappa coefficient was determined in order to determine the reliability of the evaluations of the raters who scored the data. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was determined in order to determine that the dimensions and items in the developed rubric were items that were consistent with each other and that examined the same feature. As a result of the findings, it was concluded that there was a high level of consistency between the evaluations made by different raters. In addition, in line with the expert opinions received during the development of the rubric, It was concluded that the rubric exactly measured what was intended to be measured and the rubric was valid and reliable. Keywords: Writing, Critical Writing, Rubric DOI: 10.29329/epasr.2021.383.14 * This study includes part of the first author’s PhD thesis supervised by the second author. 1Dr., Department of Teaching Turkish Language, Uşak University, Uşak, Turkey, ORCID: (0000-0002-9260-6354) Correspondence: [tufan_bitir@hotmail.com](tufan_bitir@hotmail.com) 2 Prof. Dr., Department of Elementary Education, Uşak University, Uşak, Turkey, ORCID: (0000-0001-7581-3821), Email: [erol.duran@usak.edu.tr](erol.duran@usak.edu.tr) Introduction Education systems should raise individuals who can meet the demands of the twenty-first century, cope with the problems of the age, and thus have the skills of the twenty-first century, with the methods they have developed in accordance with the requirements of the age. In this direction, the education of the new age should aim to raise individuals who know the importance of continuous learning, learn where and how to use information, activate their intrinsic motivation, take responsibility for learning by directing themselves, and who can think creatively, innovatively, questionably and critically. Because in this period, which is called the information age and where knowledge is accepted as "power", individuals are faced with a lot of information that is very difficult to distinguish between right and wrong. Individuals need to think, question, criticize and interpret in order to reach the correct information in this information pollution. This is possible with the development of reading and writing skills on the basis of a critical perspective. For this reason, it is necessary to acquire critical thinking, critical reading and critical writing skills, which are among the most important skills to be acquired and developed in the twenty-first century. Among these skills, critical writing has a special importance. Demirel &Şahinel (2006, p. 113) emphasize that the writing methods and techniques used since the first grade of primary school have been replaced by the fourth

FAQs

What is the main aim of the study?

The study aims to develop a rubric for evaluating fourth-grade primary students’ critical writing skills.

How were students and expert opinions involved in developing the rubric?

The rubric development involved collecting feedback from classroom and subject teachers, doctoral students, and academicians, and asking the student group to write critical articles for evaluation with the scoring key.

How did the researchers test reliability and consistency of the rubric?

Cohen’s Kappa was used to determine reliability of raters’ evaluations, and Cronbach Alpha was used to check consistency among the rubric’s dimensions and items.

Oct 15, 2026

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