The use of reflective essays has become a key artifact of outcome-based writing assessment in the field of writing studies (White, 2005). However, scoring reflective essays may be influenced by textual features irrelevant to most outcomes and assessment rubrics. Two problematic features are teacher-pleasing, which Yancey (1996) called the “schmooze factor,” and student-fashioning, which Miura (2018) related to identity formation. In this article, we present two mixed methods studies to examine the effects of these particular textual features on the direct assessment of first-year writing (FYW) reflective essays. In the first pilot study, we identified four textual features relevant to teacher-pleasing and student-fashioning. In the second quasi-experimental study, we created a sample of FYW essays with and without these features. Two assessment teams then scored the essays in order to determine whether these features had statistically significant effects on assessment scores. The empirical results of these linked studies indicate these features did not have significant effects in a direct assessment of FYW reflective essays. However, in the discussion and conclusion, we argue our mixed methods approach offers a feasible and efficient set of research methods to examine specific textual features in the direct assessments of student writing.

This program profile describes an intergenerational workshop focused on the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. The workshop was nested within a 15-week community-based intermediate composition course in which undergradu- ates interviewed older adults while older adults wrote personal narratives of their firsthand experiences during the rebellion. The workshop is an example of how intergenerational collaboration built around inquiry into historical events can be the basis for authentic community-university relationships.

Recent interest in reflective writing in the classroom is tied to the suggested links among reflection, metacognition, and learning transfer. There is still a limited understanding, however, about the distinguishing features of reflective writing and how teachers might identify and use these features to teach effective reflective practices and to interact with student reflective writing. This study uses Gorzelsky et al.’s (2016) taxonomy of metacognitive behaviors to examine the end-of-semester reflective essays of undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year writing course at a large midwestern university. The authors identify and describe a feature of student reflective writing involving the use of emotional language and, working from their findings, suggest a teaching strategy and set of classroom activities aimed at leveraging students’ emotive expressions in ways that foster metacognitive awareness.

Author(s): Pruchnic, Jeff; Susak, Chris; Grogan, Jared; Primeau, Sarah; Torok, Joe; Trimble, Thomas; Foster, Tanina; Barton, Ellen | Abstract: The development of present-day assessment culture in higher education has led to a disciplinary turn away from statistical definitions of reliability and validity in favor of methods argued to have more potential for positive curricular change. Such interest in redefining reliability and validity also may be inspired by the unsustainable demands that large-scale quantitative assessment would place on composition programs. In response to this dilemma, we tested a mixed-methods approach to writing assessment that combined large-scale quantitative assessment using thin-slice methods with targeted, smaller-scale qualitative assessment of selected student writing using rich features analysis. We suggest that such an approach will allow composition programs to (a) directly assess a representative sample of student writing with excellent reliability, (b) significantly reduce total assessment time, and (c) preserve the autonomy and contextualized quality of assessment sought in current definitions of validity.

This essay explores student-authored ethnographies written by undergraduates in four sections of a service-learning course taught at Wayne State University in Detroit. I argue that the introductory sections of students’ ethnographic narratives provide particular insights into the relationship between the service experience, ethnographic inscription, and student subjectivities. Following a discourse analysis of student writing, I offer some thoughts about how instructors might improve the pedagogical pairing of ethnographic writing with service-learning experiences.

The research reported here is an exploratory discourse analysis of a corpus of six end-of-life discussions in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), describing the structure and variations of the four phases of an end-of-life discussion in terms of the function of each of these phases: the Opening (Phase 1), Description of Current Status (Phase 2), Holistic Decision Making (Phase 3), and Logistics of Dying (Phase 4). Of particular interest is Phase 2, in which the presentation of medical information culminates in an inferential summary statement that functions to establish the patient's status as terminal. We argue that it is Phase 2 that is crucial in the functional progression of an end-of-life discussion toward a decision to move from therapeutic to palliative care, since it is in Phase 2 that physicians and families interactionally achieve a consensus that allows a decision to withdraw or withhold further treatment, including life support, which would be futile and only prolong the patient's suffering. We show how two of the end-of-life discussions in the corpus that did not establish the terminal status of the patient in Phase 2 did not move to decision making in Phase 3.