Recent jwa items

Exploring Fairness and Seeking Social Justice for Writing Assessment: ePortfolios, Language Difference, and Metacognition

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This quantitative validation analysis applies antiracist methods to longitudinal ePortfolio assessment data to study language difference through the lens of a metacognitive literacy construct. With interdisciplinary research reshaping the field of writing assessment using quantitative and intersectional demographic approaches, this essay advances language as a meaningful register of validity evidence and an indicator of fairness across linguistically and racially heterogeneous students sorted into three cohorts that establish comparisons of ePortfolio assessment scores from samples tracking from 2016–2020. To contribute to the critical study of social justice in writing assessment, this exploratory analysis offers nuanced responses to its guiding heuristic question: Can ePortfolios be instruments of fairness in a local assessment ecology? For this formative curricular assessment, rigorous statistical methods complicate claims derived from the ePortfolio assessment results,...

On Neurodivergence/Disability and Labor-Based Grading: A Response to Kryger and Zimmerman (2020) and Carillo (2021)

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay responds to existing scholarship on neurodivergence/disability and labor-based grading, contending that current critiques define labor-based grading too narrowly and conflate the lack of quantitative grades with a lack of scaffolding. The essay further suggests that labor-based or other alternative assessment approaches, especially those which move away from authoritative, quality-based judgments of student work, invite students to express agency over and open a conversation about expectations around writing processes and habits. The article concludes by calling for additional research and conversation about how labor-based approaches may account for access and accessibility.

Continuing the Conversation: A Response to Megan Von Bergen’s “On Neurodivergence/Disability and Labor-Based Grading”

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Continuing the Conversation: A Response to Megan Von Bergen’s “On Neurodivergence/Disability and Labor-Based Grading”

Editors’ Introduction: New Editors, New Directions in Writing Assessment

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The JWA 18.2 editors’ introduction contains a welcome by the new journal editors, Mathew Gomes, Lizbett Tinoco, and Stacy Wittstock. It also provides an overview of the two articles and symposium in the issue: Bradley Queen, Kate Kirby, Maryam Eslami, and Kameryn Denaro’s (2025) exploration of ePortfolios as instruments of fairness; Daniel Ernst’s (2025) examination of the use of automated writing evaluation (AWE) technology in writing assessment; and Megan Von Bergen’s (2025) critique of labor-based grading discussions by Kryger and Zimmerman (2020) and Carillo (2021), followed by responses from Griffin X. Zimmerman (2025) and Ellen Carillo (2025).

The Effects of Automated Writing Evaluation Technology on Improving Student Writing

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Advances in automated writing evaluation technology have shifted the aims of the tools from reliably and holistically scoring and ranking essays to providing formative and analytical feedback to users for improving writing. This study uses a quasi-experimental design to test the ability of one automated writing evaluation program to improve college student writing. Using a comparative judgment model of assessment, four college writing instructors evaluated pairs of essays with one per pair treated by the program and selected the better of each pair. The essays treated by the automated evaluation program significantly underperformed the null hypothesis of 50%. Results suggest the automated evaluation program fails to improve student writing in the eyes of instructors. Theories and implications for why are discussed.

Troubling Definitions, Expanding Conceptions: A Response

Mon, 8 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Troubling Definitions, Expanding Conceptions: A Response

Editor’s Introduction: Placement and Its Discontents or The Long Winding Road toward Change

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The JWA 18.1 editor's introduction contains Carl Whithaus's reflections on 10 years editing the journal. It also provides an overview of the six articles in the issue: Sallie Koenig, Catrina Mitchum, and Rochelle Rodrigo's (2025) exploration of completion rubrics on student learning and agency in online asynchronous courses; Maggie Fernandes, Emily Brier, and Megan McIntyre's (2025) critique of "ungrading" and development of alternative writing assessments to more effectively achieve the goals of "ungrading"; Kate L Pantelides and Erin Whittig's (2025) section introduction updating us on Student Self Placement (SSP); Amy Ferdinandt Stolley, Dauvan Mulally, and Craig Hulst's (2025) 30-year retrospective on how Directed Self Placement (DSP) has developed and changed over time at Grand Valley State University; Genie Giaimo and Kristina Reardon’s (2025) examination of how SSP can encourage changes across different writing courses at a small liberal arts college; and, Jessica...

Everything Old Is New Again: Reconsidering DSP Amid the Changing Academic Landscape at Grand Valley State University

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As the origin of directed self-placement (DSP), Grand Valley State University is in the unique position of having created, adapted, and maintained a DSP program for almost thirty years. This article explores the history of GVSU’s placement practices to articulate what we have learned about DSP amid our institution’s changing academic landscape. Using interviews and reflections from past and current administrators who lead our placement practices, we demonstrate that the philosophical foundation of DSP—student self-efficacy—remains the guiding light of our placement practices. However, we argue that multiple changes experienced at many institutions, including new admissions standards, changing student demographics, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, require WPAs to consider new questions about DSP to ensure that our placement practices promote equity and access to all students.

Wrap-around support via a directed self placement model: A treatment for SLAC writing programs

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, two WPAs at small and highly selective liberal arts colleges (SLACs) discuss the process of developing and implementing a “wrap-around” directed self placement (DSP) model. Beginning with a braided narrative, the authors discuss the impetus for the DSP, its impact on course placement, as well as using DSP data to create robust support plans for individual students. Of course, given the elite nature of the authors’ institutions, we also discuss how to apply a DSP model in a competitive and highly selective context where there are few, if any, developmental courses. Here, we offer possibilities for DSPs at SLACs that include retention and persistence tracking, as well as tracing self-efficacy by disciplinary specialization (i.e., STEM). We end by sharing our instruments and guidance on how SLAC WPAs can use DSP in novel and more comprehensive ways.

Afterword: Finding the Right Note in Writing Placement

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Afterword: Finding the Right Note in Writing Placement

The Trouble With “Ungrading”: Toward Disciplinary Specificity in Alternative Writing Assessment

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Responding to the emergent discourse around “ungrading,” this essay articulates the need for disciplinary conversations about alternative writing assessments, conversations that center work on antiracism, Black Linguistic Justice, and anti-ableist composition pedagogies and policies. From that foundation, we argue, we have the chance to build concrete, specific, and equitable alternative assessment practices that also include the practices and voices of the faculty and graduate students most likely to be teaching first-year composition courses.

Using Completion Rubrics to Grade Engagement in Online Spaces

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study examines how completion rubrics impact student learning and agency in online asynchronous courses. The study was conducted during the Fall 2021 term in three 7.5-week courses: two sections of ENGL101 and one section of ENGL300. The analysis focuses on student survey responses. We found that student responses focused on defining labor, coming to terms with invisible labor, how they experienced this new assessment system, their perceptions about the connection between assessment and learning, and finally four distinct time-related themes. First, time emerged as a theme while students defined labor. Second, it appeared repeatedly as students discussed invisible labor and grading not accounting for time a task might take. Third, students distinguished between how previous experience and skills impact an individual’s time on task. Finally, students associated saving time with gaining agency and being able to prioritize other areas outside of the class. Completion rubrics...

Collaboratively Building Our SSP Scholarship (Because Placement is Still Everyone's Business)

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Collaboratively Building Our SSP Scholarship (Because Placement is Still Everyone's Business)

Editor’s Introduction: The “Accidental California Issue” – Critical Questions about Fairness and Equity in Writing Assessment and Placement

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

JWA 17.2 features five articles that explore these evolving practices and critical questions around fairness and equity. Daniel Gross (2024) examines the implications of construct validity in the discontinuation of the Analytical Writing Placement Examination (AWPE) at the University of California. Julia Voss, Loring Pfeiffer, and Nicole Branch (2024) share how they used interviews from programmatic assessment to understand student learning outcomes in ways that value minoritized students’ experiential knowledge. Edward Comstock (2024) investigates the interplay between self-efficacy and programmatic assessment, emphasizing the value of qualitative methods in evaluating writing programs. Sarah Hirsch, Kenneth Smith, and Madeleine Sorapure (2024) present on Collaborative Writing Placement (CWP). Julie Prebel and Justin Li (2024) critique of a first-year writing portfolio assessment through lenses of equity, curricular design, performance, and reliability.

The Strange Loop of Self-Efficacy and the Value of Focus Groups in Writing Program Assessment

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s long been presumed that increases in self-efficacy are correlated with other “habits of mind,” including more effective metacognitive strategies that will enable writing skills to transfer to different situations. Similarly, it’s long been understood that high self-efficacy is associated with more productive habits of mind and more positive emotional dispositions towards writing tasks. However, this two-year assessment of College Writing classes a private, mid-sized, urban four-year university complicates these assumptions. By supplementing substantial survey data we the analysis of data collected in focus groups, we found that the development of self-efficacy does not necessarily correlate to the development of more sophisticated epistemological beliefs—beliefs about how learning happens—nor the development of rhetorically-effective “writing dispositions." In short, suggesting the value of focus groups in assessment, we discovered a “strange...

Assessment is Constructed and Contextual: Identity, Information Literacy, and Interview-Based Methodologies in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past twenty years,the field of writing assessment has moved from critical theories that questiontraditional models of validity and objectivity (Huot, 2002; Lynne, 2004) toscholarship that exposes how traditional assessment perpetuates inequality(Inoue 2015, 2019) and advocates new approaches that take social justice astheir central goal (Poe, et. al., 2018). We report on a collaboration betweentwo writing instructors and one librarian that assessed first-year writing(FYW) students' information literacy when researching and writing with popularnews sources. In addition to the typical practice of analyzing students'written work, this project used interviews as an assessment methodology. Thisresearch produced three important findings: 1) minoritized studentsdemonstrated superior critical information literacy skills compared tomajoritized students; 2) these differences were made visible through the use ofmultiple measures (written artifacts and interviews); and 3) the...

Collaborative Writing Placement: Partnering with Students in the Placement Process

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper will discuss how the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara “flipped the script” on placement by implementing a model that emphasizes the importance of student voices. Our Collaborative Writing Placement (CWP) shares many similarities with Directed Self-Placement (DSP) in that its instrument consists of survey questions and reflective writing opportunities (Aull, 2021; Gere, Ruggles, et. al., 2013). But it differs from DSP in that students work with writing faculty in choosing the first-year course that is the best fit for them. Through an examination of our initial data, and the first two years of CWP’s implementation, our paper will discuss how the CWP offers another avenue for promoting student agency and generating more equitable placement outcomes.

Multifaceted Equity: Critiquing a First-Year Writing Assessment through Curricular, Performance, and Reliability Lenses

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines whether a college’s new portfolio-based first-year writing assessment process is equitable. We build on the existing literature by arguing that equity must be assessed through multiple, complementary facets within the writing assessment ecology. We present and operationalize three lenses through which to examine the equity of a first-year writing assessment process. The curricular lens shows that the new writing assessment is more aligned with and improved the classroom pedagogy of our first-year seminars. The performance lens shows the ongoing disparities between students across demographic backgrounds. Finally, the reliability lens reveals faculty differences in how they interpret the writing rubric. We conclude that while the new portfolio-based writing assessment is more equitable, it is also constrained by institutional structures and systems of power that prevent it from being equitable, period.

Construct Validity and the Demise of the Analytical Writing Placement Examination (AWPE) at the University of California: A Tale of Social Mobility

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2021, the University of California System ended its decades-old timed writing assessment for course placement, due in part to challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond practical crisis, however, the event marks a sea change in educational philosophy away from a universalizing model of cognitive development, which dominated in the 1970s and 1980s, towards a concern for social mobility and student self-assessment. The article explores the historical factors that led to this change, including the emergence of the social mobility index as a new method for evaluating student success. It also unpacks UC's discourse on preparatory education and levels of proficiency, emphasizing instead fairness in writing assessment.

Localizing Directed Self-Placement: UX Stories and Methods

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article seeks to address the need for research supporting localization efforts in placement assessment. We argue that as a highly technical communication endeavor, directed self-placement (DSP) and its developers can benefit from research in technical and professional communication (TPC). We synthesize the theoretical relations between DSP and TPC, especially regarding models of localization, and demonstrate how implementing user experience (UX) design can help address placement equity concerns by foregrounding accessibility and usability from the beginning. We follow this discussion of DSP and TPC scholarship with storied examples from our institution, providing a sample range of UX methods that (1) are flexible across contexts, (2) are relatively manageable to implement, and (3) are cognizant of WPA, staff, and students’ time, labor, and compensation concerns. We propose DSP as a form of advocacy, and we demonstrate how UX method/ologies are an excellent choice for DSP...

Informing Self-Placement: A Polyvocal Narrative Case Study

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article provides a polyvocal narrative of the development, initial assessment, and ongoing revision of an Informed Self-Placement (ISP) process initially implemented during the COVID pandemic. The authors intersperse collectively narrated description how the ISP unfolded in its first two years with individual reflections on those experiences from a variety of positions and identities. Data so far suggest that this ISP process has narrowed but not fully closed racial equity gaps in first-year writing placement while maintaining enrollments and academic performance in the first-year writing course sequence. Persistent equity issues reside not only in the ISP instrument itself but the systems by which students learn about the ISP and the opportunities they have to complete it.

(Re)Placing Personalis: A Study of Placement Reform and Self-Construction in Mission-Driven Contexts

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recent movements in higher education have opened many opportunities for writing program administrators to reform first-year writing placement procedures, including continued development and adaptation of Directed Self Placement (DSP) models alongside ongoing research into their potential to foster student agency and advance linguistic, racial, and social justice in the academy. Our study traces and compares the efforts of two writing program administrators to reform flawed placement processes at their two mission-driven liberal arts institutions—one, a small Lasallian university and Hispanic-serving Institution in Northern California; the other, a private research Jesuit university located in New York City. Using inter-institutional, grounded theory research, this study examines students' reflections on their placement choices to understand “substantive validity,” inquiring intentionally into ways that students self-locate with regard to their self-placement assessments...

Placement is Everyone’s Business: A Love Letter to Our SSP Coalition

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this introduction to the special issue, the co-editors offer the umbrella term "methods of student self-placement" (SSP) to refer to any placement mechanism that includes student choice so that we can further build theoretical apparatus, gather much-needed empirical data, and subsequently flesh out meaningful differences in approaches. They argue that just as SSP asks us to rethink the mission of first-year writing, it also asks us to rethink some of the divisions in Writing Studies because placement work is meaningful across the university. Ultimately, they conclude that SSP isn't an easy fix for systemic problems in higher education, but it is powerful in fully acknowledging the complexity of placement and meeting students' diverse learning needs.

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

It Takes a Campus: Agility in the Development of Directed Self-Placement

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Transitioning from a conventional placement model for first-year writing to a student self-placement (SSP) model requires many stakeholders to shift their perspectives on students, assessment, and the nature of the work of writing program administrators (WPAs). This article recounts the communicative and administrative agility involved in launching SSP while simultaneously researching its effects on student success. It also foregrounds the shifts in numerous roles--including those of instructors, students, and advisors, and even our own roles as WPA-researchers--that have been prompted by the transition to SSP. In particular, this article explores the connections between those roles and academic paternalism--an attitude that presumes to know what is best for students, that doubts students' abilities to make good placement decisions, and that treats conventional placement outcomes as the measure against which SSP should be judged. Adherence to academic paternalism and its investment...

Directed Self-Placement for Multilingual, Multicultural International Students

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Directed self-placement (DSP) methods remain relatively rare in multilingual writing programs because such methods present unique ethical and academic risks. Grounded in five years of institutional research, this article reports on a first-year writing program in which DSP is the sole means of placement for international students and in which the international student population is linguistically, educationally, and culturally diverse. We offer logistical and technical guidance for creating DSP programs for multilingual writers, and we argue that DSP can be a vehicle for more equitable, socially just writing placement for multilingual, multicultural writers.

After Implementation: Assessing Student Self-Placement in College Writing Programs

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While a growing body of research provides instruction on how to implement student self-placement (SSP) for college writing courses, there is a gap in the literature about how to evaluate SSP after implementation. This article offers strategies and recommendations for assessing SSP processes, based on the authors’ experiences of developing a new SSP mechanism and evaluating its effectiveness over several years. This article presents statistical data from our analysis of our institution’s SSP, which informs a heuristic set o fquestions that others can use to evaluate the effectiveness of their own SSP after implementation. This analysis demonstrates the value of evaluating SSP processes for writing programs, as well as outlining issues that may emerge and should be considered when analyzing SSP.

Supporting Student Linguistic Identity and Autonomy in Directed Self Placement Through Linguistic Domains Using Qualtrics Scoring

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, we review the current and dynamic state of multilingual writers, especially their experiences in Composition and with English self-placement methods. Then, we position our institution and department’s theoretical underpinnings for support of multilingual writers and their self-placement, and we describe how we utilized Cavazos and Karaman’s (2021) Translingual Disposition Questionnaire as a framework for our recent revision of our Directed Self-Placement survey and utilized Qualtrics scoring tools to provide students with feedback on a novel language domain. Our intent was to offer multilingual students transparency and choice in the English placement process so they could select the first year Composition course that best matched their needs. We hope that other WPAs gain insight on how to integrate asset-based philosophies and linguistic domains using Qualtrics scoring to offer their multilingual students more autonomy in their first...

Self-Characterization in the Self-Placement Assessment Ecology: Complicating the Stories We Tell about DSP’s Effects and Effectiveness

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scholarship on student self-placement (SSP) emphasizes the importance of understanding methods like directed self-placement (DSP) as dynamic assessment ecologies (e.g., Inoue, 2015; Nastal et al., 2022; Wang, 2020), with implications not only for placement but also for how students conceptualize writing and themselves (e.g., Johnson, 2022). What can be learned about SSP’s ecological impacts by more meaningfully attending not just to patterns in students’ placement decisions but also to the qualitative content of their (self-)reflections and (self-)characterizations? Leveraging a dataset of more than 5,000 SSP pathways, we examine a corpus of short-answer survey responses, totaling more than half a million words, in which students wrote about their strengths as writers and what writing tasks they find most challenging. Students’ words help us understand how they see themselves as writers and how they conceive of college writing expectations. Through data analysis, this study found...

Editor's Introduction: Volume 1, Issue 1

Fri, 5 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Editor's Introduction: Volume 1, Issue 1

Time as a “Built-In Headwind”: The Disparate Impact of Portfolio Cross-assessment on Black TYC students

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This study of a departmental portfolio cross-assessment practice sheds light on factors that appear to influence assessment outcomes for Black students and helps to tease out some of the reasons why this assessment ecosystem has a disparate impact on these students. The findings, drawn from student outcomes data and student survey data, suggest that it isn’t only, or even primarily, Black students’ linguistic variety that lead to higher failure rates. The writing qualities most commonly flagged on Black students’ failing portfolios are likely related to the very different material conditions in which they write their papers. These conditions challenge the framing of “time” and “labor” as neutral, non-racially-inflected resources to which all students have equal access and which are not often conceptualized as part of the construct of writing ability. As TYCs across the country reform their placement mechanisms for greater access and equity and place more and more students...

Achieving High Goals: The Impact of Contract Grading on High School Students' Academic Performance, Avoidance Orientation, and Social Comparison

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines American high school students’ (N=439) self-worth protection behaviors, maladaptive coping mechanisms, and academic performance under a contract grading system, which has been understudied in contemporary secondary classrooms. The quantitative analysis revealed that under the contract grading system, 97% (n=421) earned a passing grade (i.e., A, B, or C) on the assessment and 90% (n=390) fulfilled the contract by reaching mastery (A) or proficiency (B). Compared to the previous year, students with prior experience were 19% more likely to earn an A and 16% more likely to earn a B under the grading contract despite increased workload demands. The qualitative analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews revealed that performance improved as a result of the contract’s clarity of purpose, which limited task avoidance and facilitated task-oriented effort toward a desirable goal. Students enrolled in regular courses experienced the most significant grade improvement...

What Do We Reward in Reflection? Assessing Reflective Writing with the Index for Metacognitive Knowledge

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Reflection is a staple of contemporary writing pedagogy and writing assessment. Although the power of reflective writing has long been understood in writing studies, the field has not made progress on articulating how to assess the reflective work. Developed at the crossroads of research in reflection and metacognition, the Index for Metacognitive Knowledge (IMK) is designed to help writing researchers, teachers, and students articulate what is being rewarded in the assessment of reflection and to articulate the role of metacognitive knowledge in critical reflective writing. The IMK was used to code final portfolio introductions from first-year writing courses in order to analyze the distribution of the three kinds of metacognitive knowledge (declarative, procedural, and conditional) and to explore the quality and complexity of students’ metacognitive knowledge. Inter-rater reliability testing on the IMK showed that it is highly reliable; the Fleiss’ kappa was 83% (K=.834). The...

Contract Grading and the Development of an Efficacious Writerly Habitus

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Contract grading has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, promote self-directed learning, and disrupt unjust educational norms (Cowan, 2020; Inoue, 2019; Medina & Walker, 2018). Yet, there is growing recognition of challenges associated with the approach, including the unintended effects of deemphasizing grades (Inman & Powell, 2018) and the possibility that labor-based contracts, in particular, may put some students at a disadvantage (Carillo, 2021). This article reports selected findings from an IRB-approved multi-semester, comparative study of labor-based and labor-informed contract grading in first-year writing courses at a large private research university. The study affirms several findings from existing research on contract grading. In particular, it shows the approach mitigates students’ stress and anxiety and increases their overall satisfaction with grading. Contract grading shifts the assessment ecology of the first-year writing classroom so that the...

Editor’s Introduction: Contract Grading, Portfolios, and Reflection

Mon, 4 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The articles in this issue examine the continuing use and development of contract grading in college and high school writing courses (DasBender et al. and Watson); time and labor as important influences despite most often being seen as outside of the construct of writing (Del Principe); and the treatment of reflection within writing assessment theory and practice (Ratto Parks).

Access, Digital Writing, and Achievement: The Data in Two Diverse School Districts

Mon, 5 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Students must compose texts using keyboards for college and career success. This study focuses on writing done in two school districts by students in Grades 4-11 on Google Docs to understand the relationships among digital device access, digital writing time, and standardized English language arts assessment scores. Our data cover three academic years: 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-17. We describe the amount of time spent writing in this mode and how it changed over grade levels and the relationship between Google Docs writing time and access to digital devices. Using fixed-effects regression, the amount of time spent writing digitally increased significantly during this time. Males and English learners spent fewer minutes writing in Google Docs compared to females and fluent English speakers. Students of color tended to spend more time writing in this mode than our White students. Device density (the number of school-provided digital devices per student) predicted the number...

Confronting the Ideologies of Assimilation and Neutrality in Writing Program Assessment through Antiracist Dynamic Criteria Mapping

Mon, 5 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article contributes to conversations about antiracist writing program assessment, with particular attention to the evaluation of first-year writing samples. In an effort to confront the racist ideologies of assimilation and neutrality, I employed a modified version of dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) that involved surveying students, conducting instructor focus groups, and analyzing writing prompts. The triangulated results informed the development of an assessment tool that was used to examine 89 writing samples. The goal of this assessment was not to produce a set of standards that mirror community values but rather to describe what was happening in the writing program and then use that information to facilitate critical reflection on the ways in which classroom practices align with or depart from the programmatic goal of delivering socially just writing instruction. By sharing my own experiences, I hope to help other writing program administrators (WPAs) develop processes...

Two Sisters and a Heuristic for Listening to Multilingual, International Students’ Directed Self-Placement Stories

Mon, 5 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Directed self-placement (DSP) is considered useful in linguistically and culturally diverse writing programs, but questions of self-efficacy and institutional knowledge sustain hesitancy in using DSP with English as an additional language (EAL) writers. This interview study grounded in sociocultural literacy theory explores multilingual, international students’ engagement with writing placement and courses, showcasing two quadrilingual, bicultural, international student sisters, Hemani and Kavya. Despite nearly identical linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds upon concurrently entering a writing program, they experienced DSP differently and enrolled in different sections: Hemani in mainstream and Kavya in EAL courses. Hemani shares DSP’s positive impacts on her writing program trajectory whereas Kavya’s story uncovers lost opportunities and feelings of otherness. Findings affirm that multilingual, international student placement is complex and that DSP is highly contextual....

Editor’s Introduction: Assessing Writing Programs and Their Impacts on Students

Mon, 5 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This editor's column provides an overview of Tamara Tate and Mark Warschauer's "Access, Digital Writing, and Achievement," Mary Stewart’s “Confronting the Ideologies of Assimilation and Colorblindness in Writing Program Assessment through Antiracist Dynamic Criteria Mapping," and Analeigh Horton's “Two Sisters and a Heuristic for Listening to Multilingual, International Students’ Directed Self-Placement Stories.”

The Injustice of Opportunity: Clarence DeWitt Thorpe, Articulation, and the Inter-Institutional Ecology of Writing Assessment

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Because writing assessment’s present is bound to its past (Elliot, 2005; Poe et al., 2018), scholarship has pointed to the need for more critical inquiries of local “assessment ecologies” (Inoue, 2015) to better understand the effects of past injustices (Hammond, 2018; Harms, 2018). In understanding how opportunities are allocated unjustly within processes like articulation, compositionists must be willing to understand how postsecondary ecologies have systematically attempted to deny opportunities for certain student groups. This article does so by examining the 1935 Michigan Committee on the Articulation of High School and College English, a committee in charge of redefining readiness for first-year writing across the state of Michigan, led by Professor Clarence DeWitt Thorpe of the University of Michigan. The work of Thorpe’s committee has been an under examined component of historical assessment ecologies in the Midwest and beyond. Under Thorpe’s guidance, this committee...

The Effects of Student-Fashioning and Teacher-Pleasing in the Assessment of First-Year Writing Reflective Essays

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The use of reflective essays has become a key artifact of outcome-based writing assessment in the field of writing studies (White, 2005). However, scoring reflective essays may be influenced by textual features irrelevant to most outcomes and assessment rubrics. Two problematic features are teacher-pleasing, which Yancey (1996) called the “schmooze factor,” and student-fashioning, which Miura (2018) related to identity formation. In this article, we present two mixed methods studies to examine the effects of these particular textual features on the direct assessment of first-year writing (FYW) reflective essays. In the first pilot study, we identified four textual features relevant to teacher-pleasing and student-fashioning. In the second quasi-experimental study, we created a sample of FYW essays with and without these features. Two assessment teams then scored the essays in order to determine whether these features had statistically significant effects on assessment scores....

Editors Introduction, Volume 14 Issue 1

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Editors Introduction, Volume 14 Issue 1

Slouching Toward Sustainability: Mixed Methods in the Direct Assessment of Student Writing