Informing Self-Placement: A Polyvocal Narrative Case Study

Toth, Christie; Andrus, Jennifer; Onwuzuruoha, Nkenna; Clawson, Nicole; Fraser, Pietera; Fochs, Aubrey; Rivera Aguilar, Samuel

doi:10.5070/w4jwa.1637

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 16 publications

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“…Toth et al's new article also opens up spaces for multiple stakeholders to join the conversation around self-placement processes. Having researchers such as Toth et al (2019Toth et al ( , 2024 and Pantelides and Whittig (2024) focus on placement highlights JWA's commitment to attending to teachers as researchers and to listening to student voices about how writing assessment impacts their college experiences.…”

Section: Data-driven Studies Of Writing Placement Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

Whithaus

2024

Journal of Writing Assessment

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Journal of Writing Assessment (JWA) has embraced the idea of Special Issues (SI) as a way of bringing together outstanding scholarship around a pressing issue for writing assessment researchers. As guest editors for this SI on student self placement (SSP), Kate L. Pantelides (Middle Tennessee State University) and Erin Whittig (University of Arizona) have not disappointed. In fact, they have brought together an engaging collection of eight articles that trace the dynamic conversations around SSP which are occurring at colleges and universities across North America. This SI is, perhaps, the largest single sustained work on self-placement since Dan Royer and Roger Gilles's (2003) Directed Self-Placement: Principles and Practices. In Pantelides and Whittig's (2024) introductory essay, "Placement Is Everyone's Business: A Love Letter to Our SSP Coalition, " they explain how SSP operates as an umbrella term for a variety of methods for placing students into college writing courses. They note that varieties of SSP can include guided self-placement (GSP), directed self-placement (DSP), and informed self-placement (ISP). All these techniques "include student choice as part of the mechanism. " And while there are many fellow travelers under the SSP umbrella, Pantelides and Whittig acknowledge that the similarities in nomenclature may actually obscure the wide range of practices that fall under these terms. This SI teases out those differences at the same time it develops theoretical approaches for placement and reports on empirical studies from multiple institutions. These data-driven articles wrestle with questions of ethics and student agency as well as fairness, predictive validity, and social justice; they also develop a nomenclature,

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Section: Data-driven Studies Of Writing Placement Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

Whithaus

2024

Journal of Writing Assessment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Post-Reform Placement and Writing Proficiency in Community College Transfer-Level Composition Courses

Nazzal

Olson

Chung

2023

Community College Review

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Objective: Extensive reform has been implemented in community colleges across the nation to help expedite the attainment of students’ academic goals of degree completion and transfer to 4-year institutions. Reform at the institution in this study resulted in replacement of the college writing placement exam and the precollegiate course sequence with an online assessment questionnaire by which students were provided with an automated recommendation based on their high school records to enroll into one of two versions of the transfer-level composition course, either with or without a support course. Examined are: (1) whether students who need the most writing support are effectively positioning themselves to receive it; and (2) whether the new placement policy improves students’ chances for college success while examining its impact on specific student subgroups. Method: An analytic writing assessment and survey were administered to students. Compared are students’ scores on the assessment, their self-reported high-school GPA, and their final course grades. Results: Findings show: (1) no significant differences in academic writing proficiency between students enrolled in the two course types; (2) students mostly followed the college’s recommendation for enrollment based on their high school GPA, which is found to be weakly related to their measured levels of writing proficiency; and (3) generally high course pass rates of students at all levels of proficiency. Contribution: This study generates data that can help inform policy and practice in community colleges and clarify ways to best support students in composition toward achieving their academic goals of degree attainment and transfer.

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Informing Self-Placement: A Polyvocal Narrative Case Study

Cited by 2 publications

References 16 publications

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue on Student Self Placement (SSP)

Post-Reform Placement and Writing Proficiency in Community College Transfer-Level Composition Courses

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