What we really value : beyond rubrics in teaching and assessing writing / Bob Broad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Broad, Bob, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching.

English language.

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher).

Report writing.

English language--Ability testing.

Grading and marking (Students).

Report writing--Evaluation.

Physical Description:

xi, 174 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Logan : Utah State University Press, [2003]

Summary:

As useful as they have been, the great weakness of departmental writing rubrics lies in what they leave out. They present a handful of inarguably important criteria by which writing should be evaluated, but they omit dozens of other criteria (such as "interest," "tone," or "commitment") by which any rhetorical performance is also likely to be judged. They achieve evaluative brevity and clarity, but in so doing, they surrender their descriptive and informative potential. In short, traditional rubrics and scoring guides prevent writing teachers from telling the truth about what they believe, what they teach, and what they really value in student writing.

In What We Really Value, Bob Broad offers a new vision of how to discover and express the criteria by which faculty evaluate students' writing. The result of a long-term qualitative study, Broad's method of mapping the values that inform writing evaluation is empirically grounded, painstakingly analyzed, yet flexible, human, and pedagogically wise. Not simple, but surely practical, it yields a more satisfactory process of exploration and a more useful representation of the values by which compositionists teach and assess writing. With this important study, Broad moves the field far beyond rubrics in teaching and assessing writing.

Contents:

1 To Tell the Truth: Beyond Rubrics 1

2 Studying Rubric-Free Assessment at City University: Research Context and Methods 16

3 Textual Criteria: What They Really Valued, Part 1 32

4 Contextual Criteria: What They Really Valued, Part 2 73

5 A Model for Dynamic Criteria Mapping of Communal Writing Assessment 119

Appendix A Assignments for English 1 Essays 139

Appendix B Selected Sample Texts from City University 142

Midterm essays 142

"Anguish" 142

"Gramma Sally" 144

"Pops" 146

End-term portfolios 148

Portfolio 2 148

"Professional Helper" (from Portfolio 3) 156

Portfolio 4 157.

Notes:

Accompanied by 1 ill. on a folded sheet and inserted in a pocket inside the back cover.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-172) and index.

ISBN:

0874215536

OCLC:

50982360