Improving Outcomes: Disciplinary Writing, Local Assessment, and the Aim of Fairness
- Editors: Diane Kelly-Riley, Norbert Elliot
- Pages: 280
- Published: 2020
- ISBN: 9781603295130 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603295123 (Hardcover)
“This book reaffirms why writing assessment at the postsecondary level in the United States is among the most interesting and forward-thinking work in the field.”
—David Slomp, University of Lethbridge
Students thrive when they are exposed to a variety of disciplinary genres, and their lives—and our institutions—are enriched by improving their writing outcomes. Taking account of evolving research, writing in the disciplines, and demographic and institutional shifts in higher education, this volume imagines new ways to improve writing outcomes by broadening the focus of assessment to wider issues of humanity and society.
The essays—by contributors from diverse fields, from writing studies to nursing, engineering, and architecture—demonstrate innovative classroom practices and curricular design that place fairness and the situatedness of language at the center of writing instruction. Contributors reflect on a wide range of examples, from a disability-as-insight model to reckoning with postcolonial legacies, and the essays consider a variety of institutions, classrooms, and types of assessment, including culturally responsive assessment and peer feedback in digital environments.
Foreword (vii)
Introduction (1)
Part One: Values
A Matter of Aim: Disciplinary Writing, Writing Assessment, and Fairness (17)
A Disability-as-Insight Approach to Multimodal Assessment (26)
Fairness as Pedagogy: Uniformity, Transparency, and Equity through Trajectory-Based Responses to Writing in Hawai‘i (37)
Part Two: Foundational Issues
Assessing Writing: Construct Representation and Implications of a Sociocognitive Perspective (53)
Access, Outcomes, and Diversity: Opportunities and Challenges in Basic Writing (67)
Feedback Analytics for Peer Learning: Indicators of Writing Improvement in Digital Environments (79)
Developing Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices across Postsecondary Institutions (93)
Using Transdisciplinary Assessment to Create Fairness through Conversation (106)
Part Three: Disciplinary Writing
Reclaiming English’s Disciplinary Responsibility in the Transition from High School to College (121)
Opening an Assessment Dialogue: Formative Evaluation of a Writing Studies Program (133)
Incorporating Self-Relevant Writing in a Social Science General Education Class (147)
Writing in Architecture: Multidimensionality, Language Making, and New Ways of Becoming (159)
Writing to Outcomes: Genre in Nursing Practice (172)
Assessment beyond Accreditation: Improving the Communication Skills of Engineering and Computer Science Students (187)
Part Four: Location
Teaching Composition in the Two-Year College: Approaches for Transfer Students and Career and Technical Education Students (201)
Distributed Learning: Fairness, Outcomes, and Evidence-Based Assessment in Online, Hybrid, and Face-to-Face Writing Courses (213)
Accreditation for Learning: The Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Opportunities for Quality Learning for All Students (225)
Afterword (239)
Notes on Contributors (243)
Works Cited (249)
