Reconstructing Response to Student Writing

 “A much-needed panoramic picture of US college writing assessment, a picture that can guide students, teachers, and administrators toward more meaningful and purposeful forms of response.”
—J. Michael Rifenburg, University of North Georgia

 

 

“Melzer’s book is an important one for WAC programs and writing centers. It contains a rich repository of student reflection on response in their own words, which we can compare and correlate to the student responses we collect in our own classes and writing centers.”
—Praxis

“Reconstructing Response to Student Writing is a significant and positive addition to the realm of writing feedback and student writer perceptions.”
—The Peer Review

"A concise yet densely packed book that offers clear guidance for anyone looking to improve the feedback they provide to students. The constructivist heuristic is practical, and Melzer’s suggestions are doable for any writing instructor."
 —Journal of Writing Assessment

In Reconstructing Response to Student Writing Dan Melzer makes the argument that writing instructors should shift the construct so that peer response and student self-assessment are more central than teacher response.
 
Presenting the results of a national study of teacher and peer response and student self-assessment at institutions of higher education across the United States, Melzer analyzes teacher and peer response to over 1,000 pieces of student writing as well as 128 student portfolio reflection essays. He draws on his analysis and on a comprehensive review of the literature on response to introduce a constructivist heuristic for response aimed at both composition instructors and instructors across disciplines. Melzer argues that teachers and researchers should focus less on teacher response to individual pieces of student writing and more on engaging in dialogue with student self-assessment and peer response, focusing on growth and transfer rather than products and grades.
 
Reconstructing Response to Student Writing, especially when taken together with Melzer’s previous book Assignments across the Curriculum, provides a comprehensive and large-scale view of college writing and responding across the curriculum in the United States.