Supporting Teacher Metacognition about Formative Assessment in Online Writing Environments

Rubrics have become popular tools for assessing student writing both in classroom and standardized testing environments. Rubric construction and efficacy, however, is a topic that has been largely sidestepped in the literature and in teacher professional development. Composing an effective rubric — particularly for instructional or formative contexts — is a complex task that requires teachers to think metacognitively about their goals for a writing assignment, identify the assignment's purpose, weight the importance of various textual features, and align these elements to analytic scores. In this article, the authors conduct a textual analysis of initiating texts (i.e. rubrics and assignments) that teachers designed for use with a Scholar writing and peer response assignment. They identify three types of mismatch among the assignments, assessments, and purposes for writing; discuss implications of these mismatches for student writing and learning; and, finally, suggest ways in which online e-learning environments like Scholar might be designed to better support teachers' metacognition around assessment construction.