This article offers one potential response to Yancey's (1999) call for a fourth wave of writing assessment able to capture writing development in all of its complexity. Based on an ecological perspective of literate development that situates students' growth as writers across multiple engagements with writing, including those outside of school,…

This article reviews key developmental theories that have been adopted by writing development researchers over the last fifty years. It describes how researchers have translated these theories into definitions of writing development capable of influencing curricular design and interpretations of student writing and explores the implications for…

The present study was conducted with a twofold purpose. First, I aim to apply the socio-cognitive framework by Shaw and Weir (2007) in order to validate a summative writing test used in a Malaysian ESL secondary school context. Secondly, by applying the framework I also aim to illustrate practical ways in which teachers can gather validity…

Writing is complex, and assessment of writing is equally complex, particularly when considering the need to measure outcomes at the institutional level while providing meaningful data that informs curriculum reform and supports learning at the discipline-level. Using a multi-layered assessment that incorporates standardized measures of writing…

This study investigated the relationship of prompt characteristics and response features with essay scores on the SAT Reasoning Test. A sample of essays was coded on a variety of features regarding their length and content. Analyses included descriptive statistics and computation of effect sizes, correlations between essay features and scores, and…

This paper describes the process by which a rubric development team affiliated with the National Writing Project negotiated difficulties and dilemmas concerning an analytic scoring category initially termed Voice and later renamed Stance. Although these labels reference an aspect of student writing that many teachers value, the challenge of…

Mixed quantitative and qualitative methods were used to assess student attitudes toward the assessment criteria for higher-order critical and analytical thinking skills in writing-intensive curricula in first-year, general education courses. The courses varied in emphasis on critical thinking in the criteria used to assess writing. The analysis is…

Existing comparative studies between peer and teacher feedback in English writing classes have predominantly used frequency measures of peer and teacher feedback in learners' revisions to suggest their relative values for developing learners' writing proficiency. However, learners do not necessarily understand the feedback that is used in their…

This experimental project investigated the reliability and validity of rubrics in assessment of students' written responses to a social science "writing prompt". The participants were asked to grade one of the two samples of writing assuming it was written by a graduate student. In fact both samples were prepared by the authors. The first sample…

We present some key findings of a four-year, two-phase writing assessment project at Central Michigan University: Phase One (2002), a survey of faculty members (n=115) and subsequent focus groups (n=14) and Phase Two (2005), an evaluation of two samples of student writing (n=635 and 632). Major findings of Phase One reported here include the…

Testing the hypotheses that reflective timed-essay prompts should elicit memories of meaningful experiences in students' undergraduate education, and that computer-mediated classroom experiences should be salient among those memories, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods paints a richer, more complex picture than either…

It is widely assumed that the constraints of timed essay exams will make it virtually impossible for students to engage in the major hallmarks of the writing process, especially revision, in testing situations. This paper presents the results of a study conducted at Washington State University in the Spring of 2008. The study examined the…

Establishing the score or the placement as the first priority in a writing assessment leads to more reductive forms of writing assessment. However, if the prompts used in a direct test of writing were generative--that is, if they asked test-takers to analyze their own experiences as writers or learners, for example--the resulting texts would be…

This is the story of a research journey that follows the trail of a novel evaluand--"place." I examine place as mentioned by rising juniors in timed exams. Using a hybridized methodology--the qualitative approach of a hermeneutic dialectic process as described by Guba and Lincoln (1989), and the quantitative evidence of place mention--I query…

Large-scale writing programs can add value to the traditional timed writing assessment by using aspects of the essays to assess the effectiveness of institutional goals, programs, and curriculums. The "six learning goals" prompt in this study represents an attempt to provide an accurate writing assessment that moves beyond scores. This paper…