Complexity, consequence, and frames: A quarter century of research in Assessing Writing

Assessing self-regulatory writing strategies and their predictive effects on young EFL learners’ writing performance

“…EFL secondary school students could also employ the SRWSQ as a self-assessment tool to appraise their perceived abilities to perform writing tasks. As argued by Slomp (2019), learners need programs of writing assessment that support them in their learning, and the assessment of cognitive and metacognitive skills is essential to that learning. Second, it is important to acknowledge the wide variations in individuals' use of self-regulatory writing strategies and their writing outcomes.…”

Reimagining Literacy Assessment through a New Literacies Lens

“…Unfortunately, traditional, print‐based, assessment practices (e.g., the use of multiple choice items or separate, timed, reading and writing activities) are sometimes misaligned with the social values of New Literacies assessments. Our robust writing assessment practices, for example, have been diminished by the technocentric orientation of the measurement profession—expressed primarily in its commitment to achieving highly reliable assessments that, in turn, result in diminished construct representation (Condon, 2013; Huot, 1996; Neal, 2011; Slomp, 2019). While reliability in itself is an important assessment quality, the means through which it has been achieved through technocentric applications in the field of literacy assessment has been to ignore the complexities—contextual, social, aesthetic, and transactional—that make measuring constructs of literate ability with any degree of consistency difficult to achieve.…”

Monsters, Inc.: Curing Ethical Blindness in an Era of Test‐Based Accountability

“…In the field of writing assessment, scholars have been calling for profound changes for decades. Noting how standardized writing assessment practices drastically narrow and undermine high‐quality writing instruction (Adler‐Kassner & O’Neill, 2010; Broad, 2018; Hillocks, 2002; Huot, 2002; Slomp, 2019), these experts have advocated for increasingly authentic, rigorous, and valid methods of assessment. Nevertheless, standardized tests that reflect a narrow vision of writing continue to be used widely around the world.…”

“…In the field of writing assessment, scholars have been calling for profound changes for decades. Noting how standardized writing assessment practices drastically narrow and undermine high-quality writing instruction (Adler-Kassner & O'Neill, 2010;Broad, 2018;Hillocks, 2002;Huot, 2002;Slomp, 2019), these experts have advocated for increasingly authentic, rigorous, and valid methods As it does in Monsters, Inc., the current paradigm blocks us from achieving appropriate educational goals, despite our benevolent intentions. Our inability to see how and why our current practices damage the common good has been described as ethical blindness: "the decision makers' temporary inability to see the ethical dimension of a decision at stake" (Palazzo, Krings, & Hoffrage, 2012, p. 324).…”