| One of the primary purposes of education is the development of students' reasoning abilities. However, the assessment of reasoning using written essays can be problematic because the scoring rubrics used for these assessments often contain undefined terms and vague criteria. Therefore, this study focused on the development and examination of two new approaches for assessing reasoning through writing.;The first approach, termed model assessment, was based on the psychological theory of mental models. Model assessment was used to identify myside and otherside positions and their supporting reasons. The second approach, termed elemental assessment, was based on the linguistic theory of systemic functional grammar. Elemental assessment was used to examine the presence of conjunctions and conjunctive adjuncts. These two approaches were employed to assess a sample of high school students' (N = 156) persuasive essays. The model and elemental assessments of these essays were compared to holistic and analytic ratings of the same essays and to students' scores on standardized tests of reasoning ability and language arts achievement.;Nearly all students presented myside positions and supported these positions with general, rather than personal, reasons, but only half of the students presented an otherside position. Also, students with average scores on a verbal reasoning composite were more likely to present an otherside position than were students with low scores on that composite.;The model assessment produced two generalizable factors, Myside Reasons and Otherside Viewpoint, but the elemental assessment did not produce interpretable factors. Both the model and elemental assessments captured small, non-significant proportions of variance in tests of reasoning abilities.;Results from this study suggest that greater attention should be focused on the context in which the assessment of reasoning through writing occurs, as well as the materials used to conduct these assessments. In future studies, participants should be more thoroughly prepared for the tasks on which they will be assessed. |
