What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing

Authors

Bob Broad

Files

Abstract

The result of a long-term study of one university's introductory composition program, Broad's approach to mapping the values that inform writing evaluation is empirically grounded, painstakingly analyzed, yet flexible, human, and pedagogically wise. Not simple, but surely practical, his method yields a more satisfactory process of exploration and a more useful representation of the values by which compositionists actually evaluate their students. With this important study, Broad moves the field far beyond rubrics in teaching and assessing writing. What We Really Value traces the origins of traditional rubrics within the theoretical and historical circumstances out of which they emerged, then holds rubrics up for critical scrutiny in the context of contemporary developments in the field. As an alternative to the generic character and decontextualized function of scoring guides, he offers dynamic criteria mapping, a form of qualitative inquiry by which writing programs (as well as individual instructors) can portray their rhetorical values with more ethical integrity and more pedagogical utility than rubrics allow.

Document Type

Book

Publisher

Utah State University Press

Publication Date

2003

ISBN

9780874214802

City

Logan

Comments

Available as ebook or hard copy from USU Press.

Recommended Citation

Broad, Bob, "What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing" (2003). All USU Press Publications. 140.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/140