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In teaching and learning circles, the concept of rubrics has become a frequent topic of discussion. It is impossible to go to a conference or meeting with K-16 teachers and teacher educators and not listen to at least one colleague discussing the merits and values of using rubrics in the classroom. At recent state, regional, and national education conferences rubric discussion has focused on the use of portfolios in classrooms or within programs as a means of assessment, evaluation of research papers, or as a means to provide feedback to students in various contexts throughout K-16 education.
As a result of our participation in these discussions and of our own experiences with rubrics, we have been left wondering how our colleagues were actually using rubrics and, as a result, have identified several questions to clarify the term rubric. Do we, as educators, have a clear definition of rubrics? Do educators share a purpose for using rubrics? And finally, could rubrics simply be a fad? Will they pass into the night as so many other concepts, issues, and educational trends have in the past.
Review of Literature
How are rubrics defined? Within the educational literature, we found a variety of definitions for the term rubric. Most definitions share similarities. Pate, Homestead, and McGinnis (1993) state that a rubric is a scaled set of criteria that clearly defines for the student and teacher what a range of acceptable and unacceptable performance looks like. The criteria provide descriptions of each level of performance in terms of what students are able to do and values are assigned to these levels (Herman, Aschbacher, & Winters, 1992). Rubrics have been used in scoring portfolios (Wolf, LeMahieu, & Eresh, 1992), in assessing writing performance (Wood,1993), and in evaluating district outcomes (Bedding, 1992).
The original meaning of rubric had little to do with the scoring of students' work. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the mid-fifteenth century, rubric referred to headings of different sections of a book. This stemmed from the work of Christian monks who painstakingly reproduced sacred literature, invariably initiating each major section of a copied book with a large red letter. Because the Latin word for red is ruber, rubric came to signify the headings for major...