What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing

The result of a long-term study of one university\u27s introductory composition program, Broad\u27s approach to mapping the values that inform writing evaluation is empirically grounded, painstakingly analyzed, yet flexible, human, and pedagogically wise. Not simple, but surely practical, his method yields a more satisfactory process of exploration and a more useful representation of the values by which compositionists actually evaluate their students. With this important study, Broad moves the field far beyond rubrics in teaching and assessing writing. What We Really Value traces the origins of traditional rubrics within the theoretical and historical circumstances out of which they emerged, then holds rubrics up for critical scrutiny in the context of contemporary developments in the field. As an alternative to the generic character and decontextualized function of scoring guides, he offers dynamic criteria mapping, a form of qualitative inquiry by which writing programs (as well as individual instructors) can portray their rhetorical values with more ethical integrity and more pedagogical utility than rubrics allow.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1139/thumbnail.jp

(Re-) Mapping the System: Toward Dialogue-Driven Transformation in the Teaching and Assessment of Writing

Over three days, 180 junior and senior high school English teachers, postsecondary (university and college) writing instructors, workplace (corporate and small business) writing instructors, and government officials who are responsible for portfolios related to workforce training and literacy met to understand from a broad systems-level perspective how writing development was being supported and assessed in Alberta Canada. Conversations were structured using Dynamic Criteria Mapping (Broad, 2003) as a method for understanding the values, expectations, and contextual factors that shape the system. Participants shared values related to clarity of expression, risk-taking, and ability to motivate audience. These values, however, were enacted differently within school and workplace contexts. Writing as a problem-solving activity was identified as a tool for enhancing knowledge transfer within the system. Alberta’s large-scale writing exams, on the other hand, created barriers to transfer and development by undermining shared values within the system. Recommendations related to curriculum redesign, pedagogical change, assessment reform, and professional development are suggested for enhancing students’ longitudinal development as writers.Pendant trois jours, 180 enseignants d’anglais au secondaire (de la 7e à la 12e), professeurs d’écriture au post-secondaire (université et collège), enseignants d’écriture en milieu de travail (sociétés commerciales et petites entreprises) et fonctionnaires responsables de dossiers relatifs à la formation et la littéracie en milieu de travail, se sont rencontrés pour déterminer, selon une perspective élargie au niveau des systèmes, dans quelle mesure le développement de l’écriture est appuyé et évalué en Alberta, au Canada. Les conversations étaient articulées sur le recensement de critères dynamiques de Broad, 2003 (Dynamic Criteria Mapping) comme méthode pour comprendre les valeurs, les attentes et les facteurs contextuels qui façonnent le système. Les participants ont fait part de leurs valeurs liées à la clarté de l’expression, la prise de risques et la capacité de motiver un public. Toutefois, ces valeurs ne se manifestaient pas de la même façon dans un contexte scolaire que dans un milieu de travail. En tant qu’activité de résolution de problèmes, la rédaction a été identifiée comme outil pour améliorer le transfert de connaissances au sein du système. Pourtant, les examens à grande échelle portant sur l’expression écrite en Alberta posaient des obstacles au transfert et au développement en ébranlant les valeurs partagées au sein du système. On présente des recommandations touchant une reformulation du curriculum, des changements pédagogiques, une refonte de l’évaluation et le perfectionnement professionnel, le tout visant une amélioration du développement longitudinal de l’expression écrite chez les étudiants.

Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Educators appropriately strive to create assessment cultures (Huot 2002) in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators establish the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad\u27s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on writing assessment practice is just beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations that these writers invented for Broad\u27s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies. Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation in an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows the range of DCM\u27s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1164/thumbnail.jp

Forum: issues and reflections on ethics and writing assessment

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) appliesWe hope this special issue adds to the body of knowledge created by the writing studies community with respect to the opportunities that can be created when assessment is seen in terms of the creation of opportunity structure. This hope is accompanied by a reminder of our strength as we annually encounter approximately 48.9 million students in public elementary and secondary schools 20.6 million students in postsecondary institutions (Snyder & Dillow, 2015). Our influence is remarkable as we touch the lives of many, one student at a time.Ye

A high-resolution map of human evolutionary constraint using 29 mammals.

The comparison of related genomes has emerged as a powerful lens for genome interpretation. Here we report the sequencing and comparative analysis of 29 eutherian genomes. We confirm that at least 5.5% of the human genome has undergone purifying selection, and locate constrained elements covering ∼4.2% of the genome. We use evolutionary signatures and comparisons with experimental data sets to suggest candidate functions for ∼60% of constrained bases. These elements reveal a small number of new coding exons, candidate stop codon readthrough events and over 10,000 regions of overlapping synonymous constraint within protein-coding exons. We find 220 candidate RNA structural families, and nearly a million elements overlapping potential promoter, enhancer and insulator regions. We report specific amino acid residues that have undergone positive selection, 280,000 non-coding elements exapted from mobile elements and more than 1,000 primate- and human-accelerated elements. Overlap with disease-associated variants indicates that our findings will be relevant for studies of human biology, health and disease

International genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new primary biliary cirrhosis risk loci and targetable pathogenic pathways.

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a classical autoimmune liver disease for which effective immunomodulatory therapy is lacking. Here we perform meta-analyses of discovery data sets from genome-wide association studies of European subjects (n=2,764 cases and 10,475 controls) followed by validation genotyping in an independent cohort (n=3,716 cases and 4,261 controls). We discover and validate six previously unknown risk loci for PBC (Pcombined<5 × 10(-8)) and used pathway analysis to identify JAK-STAT/IL12/IL27 signalling and cytokine-cytokine pathways, for which relevant therapies exist

Book Review: Henry Chauncey: An American Life by Norbert Elliot

If you want to read a history of writing assessment as it developed during the 20th century within the narrow and specialized confines of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), you can't do better than Norbert Elliot's On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America (2005). If your curiosity about ETS is not satisfied by that enormously careful and detailed history, and if you want to gain a close-up, intimate understanding of the person one author called ETS's "first president and abiding institutional deity" (Owen, 1985, p. 1), then you can't do better than Elliot's new biography, Henry Chauncey: An American Life. Later in this review, I will re-visit those last two "ifs

This is Not Only a Test: Exploring Structured Ethical Blindness in the Testing Industry

The other articles in this issue (Elliot, Slomp, Poe &amp; Cogan, and Cushman) gather resources from the disciplines of philosophy, validity theory, law, and cultural studies to forge a new praxis of ethical writing assessment. My contribution takes a different approach to evaluative ethics, an approach we could term political. On the current political scene of writing assessment in the United States,[1] one heavy ethical burden lies neglected: the adverse educational consequences of mass-market standardized testing, especially the testing of writing ability. This article examines failures by two prominent testing corporations to take up their ethical responsibilities to protect the "primary good" (Rawls) of educational quality. One corporation's failure appears at the end of an evidently serious and good-faith effort to engage its responsibilities; the other corporation's failure results from its apparent lack of effort and commitment to that task. I explain both failures by pointing to the phenomenon of "structured ethical blindness", in which truths that stand in the way of someone's pursuit of profit are difficult or impossible for that person to see and to take seriously. My goal is to understand structured ethical blindness in mass-market writing assessment and to suggest how our profession and our society might best respond to this phenomenon. Based on my analyses, I conclude that testing corporations cannot fairly or realistically be expected to run their businesses with careful attention to the educational consequences of their products. Their unavoidable self-interest prevents them from seeing those consequences clearly. I therefore propose federal regulation and oversight as the only apparently functional mechanism by which to counterbalance testing corporations' pursuits of private profit with the U.S. public's right and responsibility to protect the quality of students' educations