Assessing Writing Through Metacognitive and Reflective Practice

Abstract

laJM, fall 2015 53 piece of writing developed and the changes that were made. Metacognition, on the other hand, is the rarer practice of thinking about how one came to the choices that were made —why, for example, a certain word was used instead of an-other, or how the rules of a certain genre were acquired. Thinking about assessment and Thinking about Writing Before we investigate the role of reflection and meta-cognition in assessment, perhaps a conversation about the purpose of assessing writing is a good starting point. I would posit that the purest, best impetus behind assessment, or the giving of grades, is to measure learning. In various communi-ties and for some teachers, grades serve as a kind of currency —a reward for completing a task or a punishment for not completing it—but this is hardly ever the main purpose, and most teachers agree that, even when grades occasionally must serve as a carrot or a stick, those situations are rare and less than ideal. So we accept the premise that the purpose of as-sessment is to measure learning. But in a discussion of assessing writing, we must not only consider the purpose of assessment, but also what it means to write or to have learned to write. If we are merely assess-ing the finished product, the words on the page (or computer screen) strung together with (hopefully) some punctuation and paragraph breaks, our picture of student learning is in-complete. Yes, evidence of what a student has learned to do with and through writing is present in the finished product. But to accurately measure what that student has truly learned, we must examine what the student did, as well as why she did it, and how she got to the finished product. In essence, I am arguing that when assessing that student's learning, we must consider the student's metacognition, or her ability to reflect on what she's done, why she did it, and how her work measures up to expectations and the work of others. Only by asking students to think about the choices they have made sarah chansKi