Nadia Behizadeh | Scholars Strategy Network

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About Nadia

Behizadeh's research interests include authentic and culturally sustaining writing instruction for youth, problem- and project-based literacy learning, sociocultural writing assessment, validity of writing assessment, and social justice teacher education. She has published in a wide range of journals, including Review of Research in Education, Educational Researcher, English Journal, and Assessing Writing, and she serves on multiple editorial boards, including the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Language Arts. Behizadeh is an active member of the American Educational Research Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Conference on English Education.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How to Improve American Schooling with Less High-Stakes Testing and More Investment in Teacher Development

Key Findings Brief, February 2019

Publications

"Reframing for Social Justice: The Influence of Critical Friendship Groups on Preservice Teachers' Reflective Practice" (with Clarice Thomas and Stephanie Behm Cross). Journal of Teacher Education (2017).

Examines common dilemmas for a group of 11 racially diverse undergraduate preservice middle school teachers and descriptions of their process during Critical Friendship Group protocols. Reveals that most dilemmas revolved around relationships with others, curriculum and instruction, and perceived deficiencies of students; however, through the process of engaging in reflective conversations supported by classroom activities, some participants re-envisioned the initial dilemma, such as reframing deficiency views as pedagogical or relationship issues.

"Righting Technologies: How Large-Scale Assessment Can Foster a More Equitable Education System" (with Tom Liam Lynch). Berkeley Review of Education 7, no. 1 (2017): 25-47.

Finds that today's software-powered technologies, although capable of taking progressive educational ideals to scale, have not been used for these purposes. Proposes to shift from using technologies to assess predetermined samples of evidence of learning to using technologies to facilitate complex and negotiated models of assessment.

"Awaiting a New Wave: The Status of State Writing Assessment in the United States" (with Myoung Eun Pang). Assessing Writing 29 (2016): 25-41.

Results from document analysis of websites across all 50 states conducted in 2015 to determine writing assessment formats and scoring practices. Indicates that 46 out of 50 states (92%) were primarily using on-demand essay assessment, often in conjunction with multiple choice and short answer items, and no state was utilizing portfolios for writing assessment.

"Involving Diverse Communities of Practice to Minimize Unintended Consequences of Test-Based Accountability Systems" (with George Engelhard Jr.). Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives 13, no. 1 (2015).

Focuses on repositioning validation issues in high-stakes accountability systems within a broader conceptualization of accountability systems and of validity itself. Suggests that a major area of future research in educational measurement is how to respond to the identified, negative unintended consequences in ways that realize test-based accountability assessments as a joint endeavor of multiple communities of practice.

"Mitigating the Dangers of a Single Story: Creating Large-Scale Writing Assessments Aligned with Sociocultural Theory" Educational Researcher 43, no. 3 (2014): 125-136.

Analyzes the connections among writing theory, writing assessment, and writing instruction, critiques the construct and consequential validity of direct writing assessment and portfolio assessment, and reframes reliability as local consensus among experts. Offers a new vision of large-scale sociocultural writing portfolios in K-12 education that builds on the practices of past large-scale portfolio assessment but also encourages students to write in multiple languages/dialects and modes for multiple purposes.

"The Right to be Literate: Literacy, Education, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline" (with Maisha T. Winn). Review of Research in Education 35, no. 1 (2011): 147-173.

Reviews research on the school-to-prison pipeline and presents "pedagogies of possibility" for dismantling the pipeline.