Students can use the ADAPT strategy to remember that purposeful revision happens only after reflection on the context in which writing takes place.
While other scholars have called for a similar approach to “rhetorical reflection”—“reflecting both inwardly—through the act of thinking about writing practice—and outwardly—through the act of writing about those writing practices” (Taczak and Robertzon, 2016, p. 43-44)—I suggest a specific adaptive approach to self-assessment (SA) that attempts to operationalize the purposeful work writers must do during the revision stage in particular. The acronym ADAPT can be used as a learning tool to help students remember how to use purposeful SA to act on their texts, illustrated with key questions in the table above.
The concept of adaptation could be a key element missing from many students’ less developed reflection and revision processes. Pytash explains that “This notion that writing courses must foster an ‘adaptive composition pedagogy’ (Hundley & Holbrook, 2013) is essential in teaching our students to ‘flexibly respond to the rapidly changing means of composing’” (2015, 151).
A more thorough SA design addresses the fact that some students just aren’t sure how to SA. A model of purposeful self-assessment is needed. Just as students need to adapt their types of knowledge to different writing contexts, students need to operationalize the concept of adaptation for the purpose of productive SA.
Huot argued that “Current classroom practices require evaluative skills from students which we do not, for the most part, teach” (2003, p. 68); we need an explicit model for teaching SA. Similarly, Nielsen calls for “methods that might be easily used in the classroom and readily disseminated to teachers across the disciplines” (2012, p. 13).
The ADAPT strategy is intended to teach SA as a purposeful tool. And, we can ensure this is used throughout the writing process, but even before and after, and especially at the key stage of revision. I fielded this model recently in my classroom during the revision stage of my students' most recent papers. An example of one of my student's statement of planned revising action based on the ADAPT strategy can be seen below:
Keep my evidence more consistent.
Review other synthesis essays.
These ideas came from the student himself and were not "one size fits all" strategies.
Adapting the Strategy
Of course, reliance on SA to teach requires “the additional steps” of students being able to apply reflection to their texts to arrive at revision based in a theory of writing that puts the student as “expert in training” as the center of an awareness of people and texts. Each revision technique in a classroom (the application of reflection) will be unique and the student will need to learn to adapt during revision as much as anything.
I encourage you to adapt the ADAPT Strategy for your own use in your writing classroom!
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