Rubrics
are a staple of educational practice, yet teachers who use educational
rubrics often don't realize the term is meaningless to the general
population.
Don't use the term rubric unless you define rubric for your
students and their parents in words that have meaning for them.
My first educational rubric encounter
The first time I heard the word rubric used by an educator,
I was taking a graduate course in assessment for online instruction.
I'd already completed two masters in education fields and never
heard the term used in that context.
I knew that in the middle ages before the invention of digital
cameras, copyists put initial red letters called rubrics
on a manuscript chapter to make the pages look more inviting.
My collegiate dictionary confirmed my understanding of the term.
I couldn't imagine what fancy, colored initials on book chapters
had to do with grading papers.
My professor had a string of letters in black type after her name,
so I asked her to define rubric. She didn't answer me. So
I did what I often have to do when translating technical information:
I found examples of the term in use and figured out what it meant
in context.
Aside: You teach your students to do that kind of reading
comprehension activity, don't you? I hope so. It's a pretty
important skill.
Rubric is a red letter term
It turns out that educators, who are big on red ink, picked up
the term rubric so folks outside the Sacred Groves of Academe
would think they were doing something esoteric.
I
had been using assessment rubrics
in my classes for years and didn't know it. I just thought I was
using a grading guide. What a dummy I was!
You can define rubric as a checklist or a matrix
that provides guidance for learners.
Some rubrics are designed primarily as self-assessment tools
for students.
Others are designed as grading guides for teachers. This
is the way the term was being used by my education professor.
Unlike the medieval page decorations, which added beauty and joy
to their setting, assessment rubrics attempt to drain all the
subjectivity and quirkiness from grading — and they aren't
particularly good at that.
While writing rubrics do help teachers grade papers somewhat evenhandedly,
they are not really objective.
The rubrics also don’t eliminate the need to write personal
comments. You still need to respond to the student in a one-to-one
way.
Alternative terminology
Instead of trying to define rubric for students and parents,
use synonyms for the term that describe how that particular
rubric is used. For example, you could use terms like:
-
Grading form
-
Evaluation guide
-
Checklist
-
Progress record
as more meaningful substitutes for the term rubric.
Vocabulary lesson from rubrics
When you mention the term rubric to your students, you might
slip in a little vocabulary lesson.
You cannot define rubric
two different ways and expect all students to understand that a
single word can be used differently in different contexts. However,
all students must know that concept or they won't be able to apply
the rules of grammar and punctuation.
Rubric is a perfect example of how a single word can have
different meanings in different contexts. Because educational
and typographic rubrics are both visual, you can literally show
the different meanings.
Students with learning difficulties need everything made
explicit. Hints don't work for them.
Incidentally, I've found some bright and well-read students who
were not conscious of the fact that one word can be used
differently in different contexts.
