Yes, absolutely, you can assess redrafting, revising, and editing. The whole process hinges on time and class size in order to do it well. And AI and peer-tp-peer assessment and data can help with the process. I'll try and circle back to a more detailed response. Thanks for keeping this important conversation going.
In principle, yes of course. Her point was that it's not practically possible if your goal is to ensure that every primary/secondary school graduate achieves mastery of basic writing skills at their respective levels.
I find "mastery" to be a tricky word. A primary/secondary school student is rarely a master of their work, even at the end of their secondary school experience. I'll stick to writing at the moment.
A writer evolves in sophistication and understanding of the the writing process as he matures, gains experience, and deepens his understanding what writers are doing in their piece (particular to a genre) and how they solve the problem of expressing themselves (assuming they are even motivated to do). Eventually, the most accomplished writers will gain an identity, a voice, and a confidence in what they want to express and how to express it. However, even the most sophisticated writer will have an editor. Maybe one formal one, and sometimes various informal ones. So, there is always some feedback loop in place for writers. This is the most difficult piece of the writing process to assess: how writers talk to other about their writing in order to collect feedback that they can then integrate or not into their drafting/writing process.
Educators need to know that their students are able to apply age-appropriate writing process strategies to compose a piece of writing that results in something we would expect to be understandable for the child's age. A child can know or repeat a series of strategies on a multiple choice assessment, but can they apply those strategies in a way that results in a piece of writing that would be expected of the age group. So there is no getting around the difficulty of the task of assessing student writing.
I think her point is that this can be done. The concept of giving hints/nudges would be one way to do it. Providing students with exemplars or mentor text would be another way to see how they reflect on their own writing process I understand her point that directly assessing redrafting can convolute the assessment process. So, she suggests just teaching the writing process rather than assessing it and then simple assessing the student's final draft or publishable draft, and then inferring from the piece whether or not the student had internalized strategies for improving his writing. That would work. One would simply compare the first draft to the final draft to draw those conclusions.
As you said, and as her piece stated, it's all labor intensive even with AI. At some point, I image AI will be able to solve this problem, but not currently. At least not with the apps I have utilized with students. So, small class sizes and large blocks of time would be needed.
The process described in the piece addressed both writing process and product. It is doable. She chooses to assess the process through inference and by providing nudges or hints or some support without going into direct guidance and scaffolding.
With my own students, I would usually carry out assessments over two days. They did all their work in class so I could make sure there was no plagiarism, which is very easy to do now. I could also walk around with a checklist to assess what redrafting/revision strategies the students were using. Or I could provide them with a checklist that they filled out themselves to self-report.
So assessing both final draft/product can account for redrafting/revising strategies, but time is required. I think it is worth the time and effort to do at least every few years or prior to the critical transitions years the child's education. So in the US that is typically by third grade, sixth grade, ninth grade, and then prior to graduation from high school/secondary school.
Yes, absolutely, you can assess redrafting, revising, and editing. The whole process hinges on time and class size in order to do it well. And AI and peer-tp-peer assessment and data can help with the process. I'll try and circle back to a more detailed response. Thanks for keeping this important conversation going.
In principle, yes of course. Her point was that it's not practically possible if your goal is to ensure that every primary/secondary school graduate achieves mastery of basic writing skills at their respective levels.
I find "mastery" to be a tricky word. A primary/secondary school student is rarely a master of their work, even at the end of their secondary school experience. I'll stick to writing at the moment.
A writer evolves in sophistication and understanding of the the writing process as he matures, gains experience, and deepens his understanding what writers are doing in their piece (particular to a genre) and how they solve the problem of expressing themselves (assuming they are even motivated to do). Eventually, the most accomplished writers will gain an identity, a voice, and a confidence in what they want to express and how to express it. However, even the most sophisticated writer will have an editor. Maybe one formal one, and sometimes various informal ones. So, there is always some feedback loop in place for writers. This is the most difficult piece of the writing process to assess: how writers talk to other about their writing in order to collect feedback that they can then integrate or not into their drafting/writing process.
Educators need to know that their students are able to apply age-appropriate writing process strategies to compose a piece of writing that results in something we would expect to be understandable for the child's age. A child can know or repeat a series of strategies on a multiple choice assessment, but can they apply those strategies in a way that results in a piece of writing that would be expected of the age group. So there is no getting around the difficulty of the task of assessing student writing.
I think her point is that this can be done. The concept of giving hints/nudges would be one way to do it. Providing students with exemplars or mentor text would be another way to see how they reflect on their own writing process I understand her point that directly assessing redrafting can convolute the assessment process. So, she suggests just teaching the writing process rather than assessing it and then simple assessing the student's final draft or publishable draft, and then inferring from the piece whether or not the student had internalized strategies for improving his writing. That would work. One would simply compare the first draft to the final draft to draw those conclusions.
As you said, and as her piece stated, it's all labor intensive even with AI. At some point, I image AI will be able to solve this problem, but not currently. At least not with the apps I have utilized with students. So, small class sizes and large blocks of time would be needed.
The process described in the piece addressed both writing process and product. It is doable. She chooses to assess the process through inference and by providing nudges or hints or some support without going into direct guidance and scaffolding.
With my own students, I would usually carry out assessments over two days. They did all their work in class so I could make sure there was no plagiarism, which is very easy to do now. I could also walk around with a checklist to assess what redrafting/revision strategies the students were using. Or I could provide them with a checklist that they filled out themselves to self-report.
So assessing both final draft/product can account for redrafting/revising strategies, but time is required. I think it is worth the time and effort to do at least every few years or prior to the critical transitions years the child's education. So in the US that is typically by third grade, sixth grade, ninth grade, and then prior to graduation from high school/secondary school.