Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
WEIGHING WHAT MATTERS: A GENERATIVE SCHEMA FOR WRITING ASSESSMENT
1 2 Judith Kearns , Brian Turner
1
University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada
2
Current theory assumes that all writing is embedded in and can therefore be appropriately evaluated only in terms of “complex social systems of activity” (Prior and Shipka, 2003). Recent research suggests, however, that these contextualist assumptions may not be reflected in current practices of writing assessment (Behizadeh and Engelhard, 2011; Dryer, 2013). On the basis of his analysis of 83 scoring rubrics used in American writing programs, Dryer (2013, p. 26) concludes that “what is local, temporal, and contingent” is too often framed in writing assessment “as if it were generalizable, ahistorical, and definitive” (see also Osborne and Walker, 2014). This presentation will describe a schema which the authors believe avoids this contradiction between theory and practice. Used over the past twenty years in diverse writing courses as well as in the assessment of professional writing, our schema – it may be thought of as a metarubric, or possibly even an antirubric – is designed not only to facilitate assessment of a wide range of written genres but also to serve as heuristic for students and teachers. Perhaps the greatest advantage of our schema is its portability: in addition to its pedagogical value, the schema has proved to be a reliable aid to invention when explaining to colleagues, administrators, and lay persons what it is that writing teachers “do.”
References
Behizadeh, N and Engelhard, G Jr. 2011. Historical view of the influences of measurement and writing theories on the practice assessment in the United States. Assessing Writing, 16, pp. 189211.
Dryer, D B. 2013. Scaling writing ability: A corpusdriven inquiry. Written Communication, 30(1), pp. 335
Osborne, J. and Walker, P. 2014. Just Ask Teachers: Building expertise, trusting subjectivity, and valuing difference in writing assessment. Assessing Writing, 22, pp. 3347
Prior, P. and Shipka, J. 2003. Chronotopic lamination: Tracing the contours of literate activity. In: C. Bazerman and D.R. Russell, eds. 2003. Writing selves/writing societies: Research from activity perspectives. pp. 180238. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearing House.