E-grāmata: Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Broad (English, Illinois State U.) et al. describe the use of his process, dynamic criteria mapping (DCM), for assessment in writing programs at colleges and universities. Instructors from five US schools outline how they used DCM in writing assessment, their adaptations of it, and what they achieved. In opposition to standardized, one-size-fits-all approaches, the assessment is meant to be organic, integrated into teaching and learning, based on the local environment and context in which students learn, and promote democratic and empirical methods for generating accurate and useful accounts of what is valued in student work. The volume is in response to reviewers of his earlier book What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing (2003), to show how the DCM process outlined in it works. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Educators strive to create “assessment cultures” in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad’s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad’s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies. Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM’s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.