- Editor(s): Diane Kelly-Riley, Ti Macklin, and Carl Whithaus
- Publisher(s): The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2024.2166
- Published: April 2024
A new two‑volume edited collection, Considering Students, Teachers, and Writing Assessment brings together more than two decades of scholarship to examine how writing assessment continues to evolve in response to the lived experiences of students and teachers. Drawing from significant work published in The Journal of Writing Assessment since its founding in 2003, the collection highlights the expanding role of human experience in shaping assessment theory, research, and practice.
Across the two volumes, the editors—including Carl Whithaus, Director and Professor in the University Writing Program—and the contributing authors organize their discussion around five central themes. These include longstanding technical and psychometric questions in assessment; the influence of politics and public policy on large‑scale writing evaluations; the growing presence of automated writing assessment tools; ongoing concerns about fairness; and the experiences of the people—students, teachers, and other stakeholders—who participate in assessment ecologies.
In addition to curating foundational articles from the journal’s archive, the collection features reflections and commentaries from leading scholars in writing assessment. These contributors revisit the field’s major debates, consider how earlier conversations continue to shape present work, and identify emerging trends that may influence future directions in assessment design and research.
Together, the two volumes offer a broad and multifaceted view of writing assessment as an evolving practice—one increasingly attentive not only to measurement and policy, but also to the social, pedagogical, and human contexts in which assessment takes place. The collection serves as a valuable resource for researchers, instructors, and program administrators seeking to understand how writing assessment has developed over the past two decades and where it may be headed next.
