The Writing Teacher’s Guide to Pedagogical Documentation: Rethinking How We Assess Learners and Learning
By Angela Stockman
(Routledge/Eye On Education, 2024 – Learn more)
Reviewed by Andrew Krasnavage
Documentation: Teaching’s Answer to AI?
What’s the point of teachers when computers can grade multiple-choice tests and AI is getting better at grading essays (which are sometimes written by AI)?
The doomsday vision for our profession – and our world – sees humans replaced by digital machines. Instead of surrendering to that idea, we can use this AI boom as motivation to make the human-centered changes education has needed for years.
In The Writing Teacher’s Guide to Pedagogical Documentation: Rethinking How We Assess Learners and Learning, Angela Stockman lays out a case for documenting qualitative data during learning, thereby spotlighting an approach that has the potential to improve and humanize education.
Focusing on documenting learning
Stockman zeroes in on documenting the learning process, which consists of collecting multimodal, qualitative evidence while students work, to assess learning and adjust instruction. For many teachers, this will be a new approach to assessment.
Stockman’s description of the process makes documentation feel like you’re walking through a cave with a dying flashlight and no spare batteries. You can see the next few steps, but the full path is hidden until you’ve traveled it. Documentation is a process for teachers who are willing to embrace that uncertainty.
This book, and the practice it describes, is best suited for experienced teachers who want their assessments to feel more human, are comfortable navigating ambiguity, and are adept at recognizing patterns in student learning that they can use to modify instruction.
How the Book Is Organized
The book is divided into two main sections:
- An introduction that offers a quick tour of documentation.
- A practical guide with strategies for putting it into practice.
An appendix adds concrete examples and tools that reinforce the ideas from earlier chapters.
✻ Pedagogical Documentation: The practice of making learning visible, capturing what is seen and heard, and then interpreting those findings in the company of our students and our colleagues. – from the Publisher’s Page.
Where the Book Shines
For me, the most helpful part of this book is the appendix. In the main chapters, I sometimes had trouble picturing how the documentation process would look in action.
The appendix solved that by including Stockman’s own “documentation notebook,” full of project examples, notes, and photos.
I also appreciated how she differentiates advice for teachers new to documentation versus those who’ve been doing it for a while. For beginners, she suggests starting small by documenting a single moment instead of an entire project.
Her tables outlining types of documentation and questions to ask are concise, practical, and easy to follow.
My Takeaways as a Teacher
I read this book as the new school year approached and I had begun thinking about how to improve my practice.
In the past I’ve been like an untrained dog in a park on July 4th. Before finishing the last morsel I tasted, I’m pulled in a different direction by something new. This year, I wanted to slow down and focus on one or two promising practices. Documentation is a skill I can refine over my entire career.
Using Stockman’s ideas, I plan to use documentation with the writing process. I’ll start small, focusing on a single moment. Each year, my first writing assignment asks my sixth graders to argue whether a hot dog is a sandwich. I’ve saved the final products, but this year I’ll also document the planning process through taking photos, collecting artifacts, and conducting short interviews to better understand how students shape their arguments and conceptualize the writing process. This process will make an already fun assignment even more relational.
Areas That May Challenge Some Readers
While the book challenged my thinking in ways that will help me grow, I sometimes found it confusing because of its dual focus.
Although the main topic is documentation, Stockman often blends in examples of students using multimodal expression. For example, she begins with an anecdote about a student who resisted the traditional writing process but flourished after building a LEGO model of their story before writing it down.
That focus on multimodal expression ties into her earlier work, but as someone new to her books, I occasionally felt unsure how to picture what she described. More step-by-step examples earlier in the book would have helped.
Who Will Benefit Most
Veteran teachers who are ready to take on a complex process and have the freedom to experiment will get the most from this book.
Teachers in tightly scripted environments may find Stockman’s ideas, especially around multimodal expression, harder to implement. I can imagine that many administrators won’t support using LEGOs to plan essays or provide the time for the messiness that comes with documentation.
Still, Stockman’s argument for gathering more qualitative data in teaching is both timely and necessary because it offers a way to keep the human element at the center of our work as AI begins to influence everything we do.
Why This Matters in the Age of AI
Debates about grading and assessment have been around as long as the one-room school. AI just adds a new twist.
If machines can handle much of the traditional grading, that’s not a threat. Instead, it’s an opportunity. AI can free us to focus on the reason most of us entered this profession: the students in our classrooms.
Stockman’s approach to documentation offers a deeply human form of assessment that fits the future, honors the past, and reflects the real purpose of education.
Drew Krasnavage teaches middle school in New York and has spent the last ten years trying to answer one question: How do we help all students succeed? Whether he’s designing lessons or coaching colleagues, Drew is focused on making classrooms places where every student feels safe, challenged, and capable. He also enjoys writing about education and sharing strategies with fellow educators. Find him at andrewkrasnavage.substack.com.
