In this book, authors Murphy and O'Neill propose a new way forward, moving away from high-stakes, test-based writing assessment and the curriculum it generates and toward an approach to assessment that centers on student learning and success. Reviewing the landscape of writing assessment and existing research-based theories on writing, the authors demonstrate how a test-based approach to accountability and current practices have undermined effective teaching and learning of writing. This book bridges the gap between real-world writing that takes place in schools, college, and careers and the writing that students are asked to do in standardized writing assessments to offer a new ecological approach to writing assessment. Murphy and O'Neill's new way forward turns accountability inside out to help teachers understand the role of formative assessments and assessment as inquiry. It also brings the outside in, by bridging the gap between authentic writing and writing assessment. Through these two strands, readers learn how assessment systems can be restructured to become better aligned with contemporary understandings of writing and with best practices in teaching. With examples of assessments from elementary school through college, chapters include guidance on designing assessments to address multiple kinds of writing, integrate reading with writing, and incorporate digital technology and multimodality. Emphasizing the central role that teachers play in systemic reform, the authors offer sample assessments developed with intensive teacher involvement that support learning and provide information for the evaluation of programs and schools. This book is an essential resource for graduate students, instructors, scholars and policymakers in writing assessment, composition, and English education.

In this book, authors Murphy and O'Neill propose a new way forward, moving away from high-stakes, test-based writing assessment and the curriculum it generates and toward an approach to assessment that centers on student learning and success. Reviewing the landscape of writing assessment and existing research-based theories on writing, the authors demonstrate how a test-based approach to accountability and current practices have undermined effective teaching and learning of writing. This book bridges the gap between real-world writing that takes place in schools, college, and careers and the writing that students are asked to do in standardized writing assessments to offer a new ecological approach to writing assessment. Murphy and O'Neill's new way forward turns accountability inside out to help teachers understand the role of formative assessments and assessment as inquiry. It also brings the outside in, by bridging the gap between authentic writing and writing assessment. Through these two strands, readers learn how assessment systems can be restructured to become better aligned with contemporary understandings of writing and with best practices in teaching. With examples of assessments from elementary school through college, chapters include guidance on designing assessments to address multiple kinds of writing, integrate reading with writing, and incorporate digital technology and multimodality. Emphasizing the central role that teachers play in systemic reform, the authors offer sample assessments developed with intensive teacher involvement that support learning and provide information for the evaluation of programs and schools. This book is an essential resource for graduate students, instructors, scholars and policymakers in writing assessment, composition, and English education.

The Association for the Study of Play (ASP) is the sponsor of the seventh volume in the Play and Culture Studies Series. The ASP is a professional group of researchers who study play. The purpose of this series is to advance knowledge about play and culture. Volume seven presents current theoretical and empirical research on play and culture from a variety of disciplines including psychology, education, and sociology. The book begins with an overview of the twentieth-century and moves from conceptualizing play to significant and timely topics, such as the relationship between play and literacy. Applications to practice and policy implications are presented and include play with action figures; playgrounds; play as an integral part of the human experience; and the value of play with books for toddlers. Research activity and interests of contemporary play scholars are highlighted and discussed in relation to projected problems and needs facing us as we enter the new millennium, such as childhood obesity; play as a venue for social interaction; and play as a method of developing skill for interaction at the local and national levels as adults.

This book explores the following key questions: What is literacy? What do we mean when we profess literacy? How can we create a theoretical map of writing studies in which to locate the ways we define and situate our notions and assumptions about literacy? The author addresses these questions by mapping the ideological perspectives on literacy that inform the field's theoretical terrain.

This study views the history of error in composition instruction through a reader's rather than a writer's perspective, and in so doing, documents the manner in which our visions of error and perceptions of student writers who produce error have both transformed and remained static over the course of 130 years. A central conclusion derived from this is an assertion that error is largely produced by readers of student writers, rather than student writers themselves.

This book explores tensions surrounding the teaching of literacy in three settings of nontraditional adult education: correctional education, vocational education, and the Highlander Folk School. What literacy is supposed to do, and thus what it means, varies widely across these discourses. At its center of the book is the belief that teachers and scholars must understand the worlds toward which they, and the institutions they teach within, aspire to create through the process of education.

Includes essays that illustrate and analyze various classroom-based strategies for productive collaboration between literature and composition. This work covers topics that span textuality and critical pedagogy, argumentation and hybrid genres, student engagement and popular culture, and materiality and assessment.

Brings together scholars from various disciplines, institutions, methodologies and genres, who are interested in writing and preparing teachers and researchers of writing. This book covers, topics such as writing assessment, teaching writing and teacher preparation, graduate education, electronic technologies, community literacy, and more.

This book provides theoretical models and practical methods for helping writing teachers and writing program administrators within postsecondary institutions conduct the interdisciplinary, collaborative consulting activities that are common with formal and information writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs. It specifically discusses how to conduct the day-to-day work of negotiating close working partnerships with faculty in other disciplines and is the first book length treatment to do so. The book deepens current understandings of how writing specialist collaborate with non-writing specialists in academic contexts and provides a map for structuring successful collaborations in the future.

Play: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis is co-published with the Association for the Study of Play (TASP), an interdisciplinary, international organization of play-research scholars. This volume, the sixth in the Play and Culture TASP series, synthesizes biological, anthropological, educational, and psychological approaches to play. It is a valuable book with chapters from premier researchers such as Robert Fagen and Carolyn Pope Edwards of the United States, Arne Trageton of Norway, Paola de Sanctis Ricciardone of Italy, and Jean Paul Rossie of Morocco. Also included is an interstitial book-within-the-book by Brian Sutton-Smith.