The College Instructor’s Guide to Writing Test Items: Measuring Student Learning addresses the need for direct and clear guidance on item writing for assessing broad ranges of content in many fields. By focusing on multiple-choice response items, this book provides college instructors the tools to understand, develop, and use assessment activities in classrooms in a way that consistently supports learning. Including dozens of example items and additional resources to support the item development process, this volume is unique in its practical-focus, and is essential reading for instructors and soon-to-be educators, professional development specialists, and higher education researchers. As teaching, assessment, and learning are inherently intertwined, The College Instructor’s Guide to Writing Test Items both facilitates the development of instructors’ own practice and improves the learning outcomes and success of students.

The think-aloud approach to classroom writing assessment is designed to expand teachers’ perspectives on adolescent students as writers and help them integrate instruction and assessment in a timely way. Emphasizing learning over evaluation, it is especially well-suited to revealing students’ strengths and helping them overcome common challenges to writing such as writer’s block or misunderstanding of the writing task. Through classroom examples, Sarah Beck describes how to implement the think-aloud method and shows how this method is flexible and adaptable to any writing assignment and classroom context. The book also discusses the significance of the method in relation to best practices in formative assessment, including how to plan think-aloud sessions with students to gain the most useful information. Teachers required to use rubrics or other standardized assessment tools can incorporate the more individualized think-aloud approach into their practice without sacrificing the rigor and consistency more regulated approaches require. “Details how both students and teachers can benefit from engaging in this practice, and does so in ways that allow readers to adapt it to their own situations.” —Peter Smagorinsky, University of Georgia “This is the first truly new way of thinking about assessing writing that I have encountered in a long time.” —Heidi L. Andrade, University at Albany–SUNY “An invaluable guide for using think-aloud formative assessments to gain insight into student writing development. Every high school and college writing instructor should read it!” —Amanda J. Godley, University of Pittsburgh

Combining sound theory with rich hands-on activities, Informed Choices: A Guide for Teachers of College Writing is built on the premise that teaching writing is not about mastering a single best practice, but instead requires being responsive to a series of tradeoffs and paradoxes. Ideal for new TAs and experienced professors alike, it helps teachers navigate complex choices about course design, assessment, even professional growth—all within the context of trends in the field, institutional expectations, and their evolving pedagogical philosophies.

A hands-on guide for anyone who teaches writing to students with learning disabilities This valuable resource helps teachers who want to sharpen their skills in analyzing and teaching writing to students with learning disabilities. The classroom-tested, research-proven strategies offered in this book work with all struggling students who have difficulties with writing-even those who have not been classified as learning disabled. The book offers a review of basic skills-spelling, punctuation, and capitalization-and includes instructional strategies to help children who struggle with these basics. The authors provide numerous approaches for enhancing student performance in written expression. They explore the most common reasons students are reluctant to write and offer helpful suggestions for motivating them. Includes a much-needed guide for teaching and assessing writing skills with children with learning disabilities Contains strategies for working with all students that struggle with writing Offers classroom-tested strategies, helpful information, 100+ writing samples with guidelines for analysis, and handy progress-monitoring charts Includes ideas for motivating reluctant writers Mather is an expert in the field of learning disabilities and is the best-selling author of Essentials of Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement Assessment

Assessing Writing assembles the essential research for any writing instructor — from graduate student to program director — who wants to understand and implement effective large-scale writing assessment. Topics include the history of the field; the concepts of validity and reliability; assessment methods, such as portfolios, essay exams, and directed self-placement; and models of successful assessment programs.

While most English professionals feel comfortable with language and literacy theories, assessment theories seem more alien. English professionals often don’t have a clear understanding of the key concepts in educational measurement, such as validity and reliability, nor do they understand the statistical formulas associated with psychometrics. But understanding assessment theory—and applying it—by those who are not psychometricians is critical in developing useful, ethical assessments in college writing programs, and in interpreting and using assessment results. A Guide to College Writing Assessment is designed as an introduction and source book for WPAs, department chairs, teachers, and administrators. Always cognizant of the critical components of particular teaching contexts, O’Neill, Moore, and Huot have written sophisticated but accessible chapters on the history, theory, application and background of writing assessment, and they offer a dozen appendices of practical samples and models for a range of common assessment needs. Because there are numerous resources available to assist faculty in assessing the writing of individual students in particular classrooms, A Guide to College Writing Assessment focuses on approaches to the kinds of assessment that typically happen outside of individual classrooms: placement evaluation, exit examination, programmatic assessment, and faculty evaluation. Most of all, the argument of this book is that creating the conditions for meaningful college writing assessment hinges not only on understanding the history and theories informing assessment practice, but also on composition programs availing themselves of the full range of available assessment practices.

The first principled examination of social justice and the advancement of opportunity as the aim and consequence of writing assessment.