This volume reconsiders the problem of context in language testing and other modes of assessment from the perspective of transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinary assessment research brings together collaborators who draw on the strengths of their differing backgrounds and expertise in order to address high-stakes complex socially-relevant problems. Traditional treatments of context in language assessment research have generally been informed by individualist cognitive theories within measurement and psychometrics. The additive potential of alternative social theories, including theories of genre, situated learning, distributed cognition, and intercultural communication, has largely been overlooked. In this book, the benefits of socio-theoretical reconsiderations of context are discussed and further exemplified in transdisciplinary research studies that investigate the use of assessment in classroom and workplace settings. The book offers a renewed view of context in arguments for the validity of assessment practices, and will be of interest to assessment researchers, practitioners, and students in applied linguistics, education, educational psychology, language testing, and other related disciplines and fields.

The editors of WRITING IN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES provide a thoughtful, carefully constructed collection that addresses the vital roles rhetoric and writing play as knowledge-making practices in diverse knowledge-intensive settings. The essays in this book examine the multiple, subtle, yet consequential ways in which writing is epistemic, articulating the central role of writing in creating, shaping, sharing, and contesting knowledge in a range of human activities in workplaces, civic settings, and higher education. WRITING IN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES helps us conceptualize the ways in which rhetoric and writing work to organize, (re-)produce, undermine, dominate, marginalize, or contest knowledge-making practices in diverse settings, showing the many ways in which rhetoric and writing operate in knowledge-intensive organizations and societies. Essays are contributed by Natasha Artemeva, Chantal Barriault, Charles Bazerman, Doug Brent, Janet Giltrow, Amanda Goldrick-Jones, Jeffrey Grabill, Heather Graves, Roger Graves, William Hart-Davidson, Miriam Horne, Ken Hyland, Heekyeong Lee, Mary Maguire, Lynn McAlpine, Anthony Pare, Anne Parker, Margaret Procter, Martine Courant Rife, Paul Rogers, Catherine Schryer, Tania Smith, Philippa Spoel, Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Olivia Walling, Diana Wegner, and Larissa Yousoubova. DOREEN STARKE-MEYERRING is an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. ANTHONY PARE is a professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. NATASHA ARTEMEVA is an associate professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Canada. MIRIAM HORNE is an assistant professor in the Core Division at Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont, USA. LARISSA YOUSOUBOVA is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.