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Background: In this article, we articulate an updated construct describing domains of expertise in writing, one that meets the contemporary needs of those who research, teach, and assess writing—particularly in a digital age. This article appears in a collection published as a special issue of The Journal of Writing Analytics that explores both the challenges and the opportunities involved in integrating digitally delivered formative assessments into classroom instruction, illustrated by the example of Workplace English Communication (WEC). Each article in this special issue addresses different aspects of the challenges involved in developing assessments of complex tasks. The three framework articles that lead this special issue all highlight the importance of robust construct models as a foundation for assessment design. In this article, we present an integrated sociocognitive-oriented construct model for expertise in writing that informs the assessment design work discussed in this special issue. Research Questions: With the overarching purpose of developing a contemporary, integrated construct, we conducted a critical review of journal articles focused on expertise in writing ability, exploring the following research questions: o RQ1: What knowledge domains necessary for writing expertise are described in research articles from 1971 to 2020? o RQ2: How do these domains coalesce to describe a construct of writing expertise for the digital age? o RQ3: How can this broad construct be extrapolated to an idiographic model that describes the expertise required for writing in workplace contexts assessed by the WEC modules? Methodology: We conducted a critical review of writing scholarship from the past 50 years. The purpose of a critical review is to synthesize the significant scholarship in the field in order to advance theory. We chose 1971 as our starting date, which was the year in which Emig published her seminal study examining writing processes, as opposed to pro

Background: In this article, we articulate an updated construct describing domains of expertise in writing, one that meets the contemporary needs of those who research, teach, and assess writing—particularly in a digital age. This article appears in a collection published as a special issue of The Journal of Writing Analytics that explores both the challenges and the opportunities involved in integrating digitally delivered formative assessments into classroom instruction, illustrated by the example of Workplace English Communication (WEC). Each article in this special issue addresses different aspects of the challenges involved in developing assessments of complex tasks. The three framework articles that lead this special issue all highlight the importance of robust construct models as a foundation for assessment design. In this article, we present an integrated sociocognitive-oriented construct model for expertise in writing that informs the assessment design work discussed in this special issue. Research Questions: With the overarching purpose of developing a contemporary, integrated construct, we conducted a critical review of journal articles focused on expertise in writing ability, exploring the following research questions: o RQ1: What knowledge domains necessary for writing expertise are described in research articles from 1971 to 2020? o RQ2: How do these domains coalesce to describe a construct of writing expertise for the digital age? o RQ3: How can this broad construct be extrapolated to an idiographic model that describes the expertise required for writing in workplace contexts assessed by the WEC modules? Methodology: We conducted a critical review of writing scholarship from the past 50 years. The purpose of a critical review is to synthesize the significant scholarship in the field in order to advance theory. We chose 1971 as our starting date, which was the year in which Emig published her seminal study examining writing processes, as opposed to pro

Background: In this article, we articulate an updated construct describing domains of expertise in writing, one that meets the contemporary needs of those who research, teach, and assess writing—particularly in a digital age. This article appears in a collection published as a special issue of The Journal of Writing Analytics that explores both the challenges and the opportunities involved in integrating digitally delivered formative assessments into classroom instruction, illustrated by the example of Workplace English Communication (WEC). Each article in this special issue addresses different aspects of the challenges involved in developing assessments of complex tasks. The three framework articles that lead this special issue all highlight the importance of robust construct models as a foundation for assessment design. In this article, we present an integrated sociocognitive-oriented construct model for expertise in writing that informs the assessment design work discussed in this special issue. Research Questions: With the overarching purpose of developing a contemporary, integrated construct, we conducted a critical review of journal articles focused on expertise in writing ability, exploring the following research questions: o RQ1: What knowledge domains necessary for writing expertise are described in research articles from 1971 to 2020? o RQ2: How do these domains coalesce to describe a construct of writing expertise for the digital age? o RQ3: How can this broad construct be extrapolated to an idiographic model that describes the expertise required for writing in workplace contexts assessed by the WEC modules? Methodology: We conducted a critical review of writing scholarship from the past 50 years. The purpose of a critical review is to synthesize the significant scholarship in the field in order to advance theory. We chose 1971 as our starting date, which was the year in which Emig published her seminal study examining writing processes, as opposed to pro