Laurie

I have been here reading for about half an hour. I am a newbie and your post is valuable for me….

In the teaching and learning process, what is the role of each of the following:

- a worksheet on quality,
- a discussion about quality,
- an attempt to achieve quality,
- a completed work, performance feedback,
- an assessment tool, and
- grades?

What is essential to student learning?

What is detrimental to student learning?

The frustration for me, as an advocate (or as Angela said – tenacious) defender of quality rubrics is our field’s shifting acceptance of what counts as a rubric. Prior to the addition of rubrics in our assessment toolbox, we already had checklists, scoring charts and criteria. There really wasn’t a need to replicate any of those tools but yet many “rubrics” are in fact, checklists put into table format. Our assessment toolbox is full to bursting with tools that capture and articulate quantity in student work and I intended to continue fighting for tools to express and discuss quality.

After reading anti-rubric commentaries like Kohn’s and Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics, I’m struck by the fact that they are actually attacking the worst of rubrics or documents masquerading as rubrics. Words you cite: never, sometimes and always rarely appear in quality rubrics for the exact reason you cite – they’re vague. Additionally, quality rubrics should be about supporting students’ self-assessment and reflection – actions that are not supporting by columns that talk about how a learner failed, what they didn’t do, or what they’re bad at.

Working with students to create attributes of quality is a hallmark of quality rubric development, and essential to the process. The challenge often becomes “what then?” For students who already understand reflection and improvement, they can look at their work, look at the list of quality attributes and see how to close the gap. For students who lack that depth of meta-cognition, a quality rubric can help them see how to move closer to the descriptors of quality, that “third” column.

At the end of the day, rubrics can be a tool that support student learning and then a tool to facilitate teacher grading and/or evaluation. They can support student thinking around process, products, and performances that are similar to those that we experience in life after school. I am always willing and happy to explore the strengths and challenges related to rubrics and use my wiki: qualityrubrics.pbworks.com to explore what that looks like.

I can also help me to reflect on what I value, leading me to statements about each criteria that articulates what I expect of myself or value. These value statements help define the territory for my efforts.

But as I know you know, we are not our students. As learners new to the work, they don’t have the experience we do. Their frame of reference is narrower. I believe they have to discover what they need to know to to do the work – not what I know not what you know, but what they learn to know about the work in ways that are meaningful for their journey to high quality. Their value statements and ours will not be the same and will develop over time if the culture and the context for the learning are ripe with the appropriate supports.

Rather than encourage the creation of rubrics, why not ask students to create high quality work documents that list criteria and value statements for the work at hand. Over time they can add examples from their own work or the work of their peers or others that illustrate what they are discovering about quality work.

Isn’t that better than reams of rubrics designed with little boxes filled with text whose meaning pivots on vague words like never, sometimes and always that for years now have served adults while leaving so many students wanting more.

I’ve found this article useful to my thinking on the issue. Alfie Kohn, The Trouble with Rubrics, English Journal, March 2006. (http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rubrics.htm)

I do believe that the best rubrics were collaboratively created, but I also know from my own experiences that there are some very solid rubrics out there that were designed by others. They’ve help me consider different perspectives and push my thinking quite a bit. I know that my own learning and growth has often been inspired by high quality rubrics that others have designed. Finding them online is quite the endeavor though, and unfortunately, because so few people are critical consumers of the things they find online, the proliferation of “bunk” that you see out there seems to be influencing people’s perceptions about what rubrics are, how they are best designed, and how they are used. The more people promote these lousy examples and definitions, the more others tend to bash rubrics in general. You strike a refreshing balance here.

We should be grateful to Jennifer for her tenacious attention to rubric design and for being willing to share what knows in ways that challenge people’s thinking about all of this.