Policy as a Wicked Problem: Teachers’ Instructional Practices That Reframe High-Stakes Writing Assessments

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Wicked Renewal: Reframing Problems of Writing Instruction in Secondary Classrooms (Table 3)

Abstract

Overview
As with all “wicked” problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973), the concern in policy circles with writing as the “neglected R” (NCW, 2003) is both the cause and the symptom of another problem. As a facet of standards-based accountability, high-stakes writing assessment was intended to identify and address “problems” in students’ writing performance. In fact, it has contributed to the narrowing of the writing curriculum and cemented policy discourse around the failures of student writers. Given the intractability of standards-based accountability systems in the current policy context, we must look to the classroom for “re-solution.”

The pernicious impact of high-stakes writing assessment is well documented (e.g. Hillocks, 2002). Scholars have taken issue with these assessments on the basis of scoring practices, authenticity, and constructs of writing proficiency (e.g. Beck & Jeffery, 2007; Olinghouse, Santangelo & Wilson, 2012; Smagorinsky, 2010). Standardized writing assessments also contribute to the deprofessionalization of writing teachers and test-driven writing pedagogy (Johnson, et al., 2003; McQuitty, 2016). These negative effects are felt most acutely at schools under heightened accountability pressures (Ketter & Pool, 2001; McCarthey, 2008) and by multilingual students (Escamilla, et al., 2018).

Context, Data, and Analysis
To explore how teachers are pushing back against the negative influence of high-stakes writing assessments in their own classrooms, this study asked: What strategies do English teachers use to negotiate the demands of high-stakes writing assessment in their classrooms? Participants were five ELA teachers and two department leaders. All worked at the same public high school in a large, urban district in the Northeast. Data included a series of interviews and think alouds about student writing, observations of department meetings, and writing samples. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) following a two-cycle coding process (Saldaňa, 2013). I drew on Biesta and Tedder’s (2007) ecological view of agency to theorize how teachers leveraged their established funds of knowledge and the resources in their environment in the service of equitable writing instruction.

Findings
Teachers relied on four strategies to exercise agency in their instructional decision-making about writing. These included: 1) framing, 2) breaking down the writing task, 3) use of exemplars, and 4) creating space for the writing process. These strategies can be understood on a continuum, reflecting different perceptions of the problem at hand. At one end, some strategies attempted to address the problem of students doing poorly on high-stakes writing assessments. These strategies worked to re-inscribe the bureaucratic aims of these assessments (Scott, 2008) and ultimately limited student autonomy. At the other end of the continuum were strategies that acknowledged the assessments themselves as the underlying problem and aimed to repair the damage wrought by high-stakes writing assessment. With these strategies, teachers worked to demystify the expectations of high-stakes writing assessment for students and engage students as co-conspirators in interrogating the assumptions about language and culture underlying these assessments. These findings ask us to elevate contextualized teacher knowledge as a mechanism for combating the negative impacts of high-stakes writing assessment and re-positioning students as agentive writers.

Word count: 498

Author

• Joelle Pedersen, Boston College