This study explores electronic portfolios and their potential to assess student literacy and selfregulated learning in elementary-aged children. Assessment tools were developed and include a holistic rubric that assigns a mark from 1 to 5 to self-regulated learning (SRL) and a mark to literacy, and an analytical rubric measuring multiple…

Writing is the dominant mode through which most learning and assessment is mediated in schools. It is through writing that learners are most often asked to demonstrate their understanding of learned concepts and share their understandings of these concepts. If English language learners are to succeed in English medium schools, they must become…

Evaluation is far from being a neutral process. In recent years, tests have commanded increasing influence, which in turn, has broad implications for both individuals and society (Crusan, 2010b). One purpose for testing--writing placement or "where to put students" (Yancey, 1999, p. 485)--has presented particular challenges, especially in writing…

This study investigated the relationship of prompt characteristics and response features with essay scores on the SAT Reasoning Test. A sample of essays was coded on a variety of features regarding their length and content. Analyses included descriptive statistics and computation of effect sizes, correlations between essay features and scores, and…

Helping beginning qualitative researchers critically appraise qualitative research articles is a common learning objective for introductory methodology courses. To aid students in achieving competency in appraising the quality of qualitative research articles, a multi-part activity incorporating the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme's (CASP)…

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an alternative to traditional assessment techniques. Technical work has begun to identify CBM writing indices that are psychometrically sound for monitoring older students' writing proficiency. This study examined the predictive validity of CBM writing indices in a sample of 447 eighth-grade students.…

One of the dilemmas that teachers frequently face is grading student papers. As a teacher, the author regularly reads research regarding instructional practices, grading, and assessment, but struggled to translate theory into practice in her own classroom. The intent of this article is to share one method of instructing and grading writing that…

Presented is a longitudinal study evaluating a Bachelor of Social Work writing program. The independent variable is a BSW curriculum in which social work courses include American Psychological Association 5th edition writing modules. In 2005, a baseline was established. From 2006 to 2010, a writing program was implemented. Using a brief rating…

Examining deficits in the development of adolescent literacy, this article explores conceptions of literacy not as a "simple" exercise that merely requires layperson understandings of words, but rather, as research shows, as a deeper action that requires disciplinary knowledge and standing. Vygotsky's distinction between tool users vs.…

This review of current writing assessment practices focuses upon the adult population, an area significantly underrepresented within psychoeducational literature. As compared to other populations, such as K-12 students, there are few options for the practitioner wishing to evaluate adult writers by means of standardized assessment instruments.…

In this study, we performed a fine grained analysis of writing by children with a specific language impairment (SLI) and examined the contribution of oral language, phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal ability, and word reading to three writing constructs (productivity, complexity and accuracy). Forty-six children with SLI were compared…

Recent research on the college application essay has shown that essay prompts are misleading, and that the expectations of admissions officers remain largely implicit. These studies have not, however, examined how essays written by low-income, ethnic minority students are scored by admissions officers. For this study, forty-two seniors at a…

We present an evaluation of the Writing Pal (W-Pal) intelligent tutoring system (ITS) and the W-Pal automated writing evaluation (AWE) system through the use of computational indices related to text cohesion. Sixty-four students participated in this study. Each student was assigned to either the W-Pal ITS condition or the W-Pal AWE condition. The…

A convenience sample of 618 children and adolescents in grades 4 through 10, excluding grade 8, were asked to complete a writing motivation and activity scale and to provide a timed narrative writing sample to permit an examination of the relationships between writing motivation, writing activity, writing performance, and the student…

The current study explored the effect of portfolio assessment on the improvement of the Iranian students' writing. Additionally, students' attitudes towards using portfolio were investigated. Participants of the study were 46 pre-intermediate Iranian male and female university students who were chosen from a larger group of 70 students. They were…