High School English Teachers' Perceptions of Rigor in Student Assignments

摘要

This research was designed to examine the perceptions of high school English teachers as to the amount of rigor present in their student assignments as evidenced by a rubric based upon the revised Bloom's taxonomy.;The researcher developed a rubric to assess the amount of rigor based upon the revised Bloom's taxonomy. Teachers of standards and honors level English classes in high schools from two school systems were asked to assess four of their student assignments that they considered challenging utilizing the rubric. They were also asked to rank the assignment with a level of rigor from one for low rigor to six for high levels of rigor.;The research design was causal-comparative, utilizing quantitative data. Two external raters, high school English teachers not involved in the initial grouping, scored the same assignments using the rigor rubric. The researcher calculated the interrater reliability of the external raters, calculated the mean score for each teacher based on the teacher's ratings of the four assignments and compared the mean with the mean of the external raters with a t-test.