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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010145402 | PE1405.U6 W44 2005 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
This book takes on a daunting task: How do writing teachers continue to work toward preparing students for academic and real-world communication situations, while faced with the increasing use of standardized high-stakes testing? Teachers need both the technical ability to deal with this reality and the ideological means to critique the information technologies and assessment methods that are transforming the writing classroom.
Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing serves this dual need by offering a theoretical framework, actual case studies, and practical methods for evaluating student writing. By examining issues in writing assessment--ranging from the development of electronic portfolios to the impact of state-wide, standards-based assessment methods on secondary and post-secondary courses--this book discovers four situated techniques of authentic assessment that are already in use at a number of locales throughout the United States. These techniques stress:
* interacting with students as communicators using synchronous and asynchronous environments;
* describing the processes and products of student learning rather than enumerating deficits;
* situating pedagogy and evaluation within systems that incorporate rather than exclude local variables; and
* distributing assessment among diverse audiences.
By advocating for a flexible system of communication-based assessment in computer-mediated writing instruction, this book validates teachers' and students' experiences with writing and also acknowledges the real-world weight of the new writing components on the SAT and ACT, as well as on state-mandated standardized writing and proficiency exams.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
As curricula change to satisfy the standards movement for accountability, teachers need to prepare students to become not only effective writers, but also successful test takers. However, writing and test taking require different levels of skills. With this concern in mind, Whithaus (Old Dominion Univ.) predicts that "higher order composing skills" may eventually be sacrificed for the basic skills that standardized tests assess. Using theories and practices of composition specialists, as well as examples from authentic case studies, the author details the realities of teaching and testing. He notes that as student writing adapts to more complex computer-mediated forms of communication (e-mail, blogs, instant messages), assessments need to be adjusted accordingly. His critique extends to assessments of print-based writing, electronic portfolios, and high-stakes testing, as well as automatic essay scoring (AES)--software for evaluating writing. All require changes in assumptions about how to measure student achievement. Those unfamiliar with composition theory will find this scholarly text a particularly informative resource. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and practitioners. E. Razzano Lyndon State College
Table of Contents
| Preface |
| Introduction |
| Educational Policy, Testing Writing, and Developing Multimedia Composing Skills |
| Writing (About) Sounds, Drawing Videos: Multimedia Compositions and Electronic Portfolios |
| Situation(s): Using Descriptive Evaluation |
| Negotiating Assessment and Distributive Evaluation |
| Interaction |
| Distributive Evaluation |
| High-Stakes Testing and 21st-Century Literacies |
| Tools (AES) and Media (Blogs) |
| Strings |
