The “Writing Problem” in Assessment

• In Event: Issues of Writing in Assessment and Feedback

Abstract

When assessment involves writing, the ability to write impacts the grade that is received on the assessment. When the assessment is not fundamentally about the ability to write, but instead writing is used as a vehicle to communicate other abilities, there is a strong potential for the two abilities –the trait intended to be measured, and writing ability, to be confounded. Furthermore, as a communication from the teacher to the student, how to separate out writing from say, science achievement in the write up of a science experiment, poses some particular difficulties. Various approaches to resolving this problem have been suggested over the years, but they tend to use what Frary and Cross (1996) refer to as a “hodgepodge approach.” Some might argue that the use of rubrics to specify exactly what will be marked solves the problem, but upon closer examination, it simply begs the question.

In what might be considered a parallel to the differences among content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge, in the case of a science assignment, we might think about the student’s scientific knowledge, writing ability, and the ability to write about science. And although we might say for a given assignment that the quality of the writing will not be counted (or perhaps, emphasized) in the grading of the assignment, in reality, as educators, we really do want to see the “whole package” most of the time, and we really do want to develop the ability to write for specific, important genres. So simply counting writing as a kind of “trait irrelevant variance” hardly does anyone any good.

If we try to not qualitatively “partial out” writing ability in estimating science achievement in a written science assessment, but instead embraced the quality of the writing in science as an important and developable skill, then we might be better able to differentiate that skill from the achievement levels in the underlying science that are evident from the assessment. That is, the argument is that writing in the particular area of an assignment should not be covaried out of the grading, but embraced as a separable, and critically important part of the assessment.

In a related conceptual framework, Gusky (Guskey, 2006; Guskey & Bailey, 2010) have shown that breaking grading out into product, process, and progress criteria in fact simplifies grading for teachers, freeing them to assign grades on all important aspects of assessment.

The goal in this presentation is to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about this historically-relevent, vexing, and important issue, and to engender discussion about how we it might be brought to resolution in a fashion that is valid, fair to students, and promotes growth.

Author

• Thomas R. Guskey, University of Kentucky