3.+Composition+Compass+-+Assessment+and+Evaluation

= Composition Compass - Assessment and Evaluation = = = =Pollseverywhere.com=

In his article, "Compositon at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century", Fulkerson argues that in order to structure a course on composition an Analytical Scheme with the following elements requires consideration:
 * 1) Current and Traditional Rhetoric
 * 2) Expressivism (such as Feminism)
 * 3) Social, Critical and Cultural Studies
 * 4) Procedural Rhetoric (such as a study in genre)

He concludes that composition has He argues that composition courses are less unified than ever with disagreement over what is "good writing", and what are the best classroom practices to achieve this.
 * become more complex
 * is divided by goals
 * "we may teach one thing, assign another, and actually expect a third." (Fulkerton, "Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century", 680)
 * the public have expectations
 * no single approach is proper
 * but commonality in a program is required

Issues in the Assessment of Writing

 * large-scale assessment makes writing reductive whereby the writing is reduced to only those things we can measure quickly with reliability and validity in a timely and cost-efficient way
 * large scale assessment is to produce ranking with a single mark rather than a rich set of data
 * differing goals among agencies, teachers, students, etc.
 * contextual, social, and cultural implications
 * holistic vs criterion referenced assessment
 * Types of Assessment of Writing**
 * holistic scoring
 * primary trait scoring
 * analytic scales - "provide more diagnositc feedback than either holistic or primary trait evaluation to students" (Blattner, 234), but are also labour- intensive to design

​ The disconnect between standardized testing and literacy/composition research:
Unfortunately, despite research showing the paramountcy of multimodal literacy and composition skills, government imposed standardized tests continue to lend primacy to traditional text as a means of assessment. This is an excerpt from a Tan and Guo's (2010) study suggesting just this problem:

"Nonetheless, the //high-stakes language-dominant assessment// was one impeding factor that discouraged Alicia from giving priorities to critical multimedia literacy. On the one hand, Alicia believed that critical multimedia literacy was relevant in the 21st century. On the other hand, because the national assessment remained language dominant, Alicia commented in her final interview that critical multimedia literacy was regarded as secondary to conventional literacy. In other words, //all interactions with multimodal texts in her school literacy practices were intended to advance conventional literacy skills//. Alicia believed that the development of critical multimedia literacy could be conflated with critical literacy skills in print. This became her warrant for implementing critical multimedia literacy in her classroom practices when the assessment mode remained the same." [emphasis added]

Question: What can we, as literacy instructors, do about the disconnect between what we believe should be taught, and what the government says should be tested?  "The Scoring of Writing Portfolios: Phase 2" by Edward M. White "Writing Plan Relevance to Test Scores" by Constance Chai