Journal of Writing Assessment

In recent years, metis, which refers to “the rhetorical concept of cunning and adaptive intelligence” (Dolmage, 2014, p. 5) has been utilized as a framework for theorizing approaches to writing anxiety (Wood, 2020), examining adaptive literacy practices (Kamperman, 2020), and reimagining pedagogy in the rhetoric and writing classroom (Selznick, 2020). While this scholarship has done critical work positioning metis as a framework for challenging normative approaches to writing pedagogy, little has been written to tie this concept to alternative writing assessment itself. In this article, I offer metis as a pedagogical framework for conceptualizing accessible alternative writing assessment practices grounded in adaptation. I argue that using metis as a framework encourages writing teachers to embrace neurodiversity through flexible writing assessment tactics that center students’ nonnormative, embodied composition processes.