Reconciling Writing Assessment: Why Students Should Grade Students

"We show students the process of how to write but not the process of how their writing, finally and authoritatively, is read.Yet if students do not know how their writing is read, they cannot know how to write."In Reconciling Writing Assessment, Steven Pearlman argues that we need to resolve the "inherent dichotomy we find between teaching our discipline and assessing it."

In Reconciling Writing Assessment, Steven offers both the theoretical foundation and pedagogical methods for implementing the interactive assessment practice of Critical Assessment Literacy (CAL) that involves students in the summative grading process. In doing so, he offers college writing teachers a way toincrease rigor, interact more with students, and even decrease the incidence ofgrade disputes. Through CAL, you can help students:

• understand what academia requires from them as writers
• gain appreciation for the rigors of assessment and the reasons behind institutional standards
• discover that writing can be assessed fairly and with relative objectivity
• learn to read and assess one another's essays
• constructively resolve differing peer viewpoints
• take more ownership of their learning and challenge rote institutional thinking
• produce better writing.

Let Reconciling Writing Assessment guide you to a firm understanding of CAL so you can help your students make the grade.