Horn Responsibility Rocks! Developing Ownership through Self-Assessment and Goal Setting

24/F 9:45 AM Rockefeller

Type_Presentation: 60-minute Concurrent Session

PresentationTitle: Responsibility Rocks! Developing Ownership through Self-Assessment and Goal Setting

ProgramStrand_Primary: Developmental/Basic Writing

ProgramStrand_Secondary: College Reading

Presentation_description:

Experienced learners continually engage in self-reflective practices, thus developing a sense of ownership. Using demonstration, discussion, and handouts, the presenter shares techniques for promoting self-assessment through formal and informal practices, including goal-setting. In addition, participating teachers and/or tutors will work together to exchange and/or draft procedures/materials for encouraging student responsibility and independence.

Session_summary:

Guided by composition theory, for decades writing instructors have fittingly encouraged students to put pen or toner to paper, to talk about their ideas and intentions, and to experience the effect their writing has on an audience (Elbow, 1982; Graves, 1983; Murray, 1972). Unfortunately, despite our patience and encouragement, term after term, some of our students refuse to take ownership of their writing process. How can we better motivate students to boldly face the joyful yet difficult task of writing – to understand what they are doing and why?

When it comes down to it, successful writers, like all successful students, must become responsible for their own learning, must become self-regulated (Zimmerman, 1990). Janet Emig (1971, 1983) Linda Flower and John Hayes (1981), Nancy Sommers (1980) and others have shown that motivated, experienced writers make self-assessment a regular part of their writing process. They can move forward because they know where they have been and where they are going, and they are determined to find a way to get there.

The same self-reflective stance applies to successful learners of all kinds. According to Weinstein and Van Mater Stone (1993),“the future belongs to individuals who can identify their own learning needs and . . . orchestrate and manage their own learning activities” (p. 32). As evidenced in Black & Wiliam’s comprehensive review (1998) and demonstrated by Lee (1997), O’Neill (1998), Oppenheimer (2001) and others, a classroom atmosphere that makes self-assessment and goal-setting central to the teaching process can move students toward self-regulation and increased achievement – in writing or in other subjects. Teachers and tutors of all subjects can play a major role in students’ journeys toward self-regulation by establishing an atmosphere of support and clear expectations of personal responsibility, right from the beginning of the term.

This sixty-minute session will demonstrate how one developmental writing course incorporates formal and informal self-assessment and goal-setting activities to help students examine their writing process and change their behaviors to better approximate those of experienced writers. Handouts will exemplify methods to encourage student self-assessment as explained in the presenter’s recent article (Horn, 2007). For part of the session, participants will work in small groups to demonstrate and/or create their own materials/procedures for encouraging self-assessment, goal setting, and self-regulation. Group representatives will then present selected items and/or procedures to the entire group.

References

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in education: Principles, policy & practice, 5(1), 7. Retrieved June 16, 2005, from Academic Search Premier database.

Elbow, P. (1982). Writing without teachers. London: Oxford Univ. Press.

Emig, J. A. (1971). The composing processes of twelfth graders. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Emig, J. A. (1983). The web of meaning; essays on writing, teaching, learning, and thinking (D. Goswami & M. Butler, Eds.). Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1981). Cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32, 65-87.

Graves, D. H. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Exeter, NH: Heinemann.

Horn, S. (2007). Motivating basic writers through self-assessment and goal-setting. NADE Digest, 3(2), 1-11.

Lee, E. P. (1997). The learning response log: An assessment tool. English Journal, 86, 41-44.

Murray, D. M. (1972). Teach writing as a process not product. The Leaflet, 71, 11-14.

O’Neill, P. (1998). From the writing process to the responding sequence: Incorporating self-assessment and reflection in the classroom. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 26(1), 61-70.

Oppenheimer, R. J. (2001). Increasing student motivation and facilitating learning. College Teaching, 49(3), 96-98.

Sommers, N. (1980). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. College Composition and Communication 31, 378-388.

Weinstein, C. E., & Van Mater Stone, G. (1993). Broadening our conception of general education: The self-regulated learner. New Directions for Community Colleges, 21(1), 31-39.

Zimmerman, B. J. (1990). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 3-17.

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Note: This presentation is an updated version of sessions presented at the 2005 Ohio Association of Developmental Education Conference and the 2006 National Association of Developmental Education Conference.

Biography – Susanna K. Horn

Susanna Horn is the coordinator of Basic Writing and the Writing Center at the University of Akron Wayne College. She has worked with developmental writing students for over twenty years and has co-authored with Ken Pramuk the textbook A Course in Basic Writing. Sue loves to help students understand their potential as writers, and nothing thrills her more than silently “watching the learning wheels turning in students’ brains.”