Date of Award

Fall 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Jessica Van Cleave

Abstract

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the influence of high-stakes reading tests on student self-efficacy, or confidence, as readers. The study focused on sixth-grade students who had taken the reading end-of-grade (EOG) test in Grades 3, 4, and 5. I analyzed their third-grade reading EOG scores to determine if that score was predictive of the fourth-grade reading EOG score and repeated the same analysis to see if fourth-grade reading EOG scores were predictive of fifth-grade scores. Then, those sixth-grade students' reading self-efficacies, as measured by the Butz and Usher (2015) Self-Efficacy Survey, were compared to their reading EOG score historical results to learn if a relationship existed between reported self-efficacy and EOG score. Additionally, interviews were conducted with teachers and parents/guardians about the factors they perceived as impacting student reading self-efficacy most. The analysis identified themes that highlighted how students connect their test scores and experiences to their reading self-efficacy. Results of the study show that students use testing performance to develop their identity as readers and internalize the positive and negative messages they attach to a score result, which in turn impacts their motivation, leading to such predictability in scores year after year. By providing a closer look at the relationship between test scores and self-efficacy in the elementary grades, this dissertation contributes insights into how self-efficacy develops around academic subjects in the school setting.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Download

Share

COinS