Coherent Rubric Logic Builder

What This Skill Does

This skill encodes an original practitioner framework developed by Gareth Manning, educator, curriculum designer, and learning systems designer. Unlike skills in other domains, it is not drawn from peer-reviewed research traditions. It is grounded in serious engagement with learning science, original curriculum design work, and active classroom testing. It is included because the methodology is coherent, transferable, and genuinely useful — and because intellectual honesty requires distinguishing practitioner frameworks from research-validated approaches.

This skill builds a complete, coherent rubric for a learning target or project assessment — using a five-level scale where Competent IS success, not a midpoint. Most rubrics fail because they treat the middle level as "average" and the top level as "excellent" — creating a system where the majority of students are implicitly labelled as inadequate. Manning's rubric logic inverts this: Competent represents genuine mastery of the band-level expectation. It IS the target. Extending is rare and requires specific evidence of transfer, depth, or sophistication beyond the band expectation. Emerging is a legitimate starting point, not a failure. The output is a full rubric table with precise descriptors at each level, plus a co-construction plan for working with students to make the criteria their own. Sadler (1989) established that students need to understand what quality looks like before they can self-assess meaningfully — the co-construction process is essential, not optional. The rubric methodology is designed to work alongside the Learning Target Authoring Guide (Skill 98) — the rubric is the assessment instrument for a specific LT, not a separate system.

Evidence Foundation

Manning developed the rubric logic through curriculum design, documented in the Rubric Logic Guide v2.1 (January 2026). The five-level scale is anchored by two complementary frameworks: Burch's (1970) four stages of competence — unconscious incompetence (doesn't know they don't know), conscious incompetence (knows they don't know), conscious competence (can do it with deliberate effort), unconscious competence (can do it automatically) — provides the developmental logic for the levels. Haring et al.'s (1978) instructional hierarchy — acquisition, fluency, retention, generalisation, adaptation — maps to the levels and determines the appropriate instructional response: a student at Emerging needs guided acquisition practice, not homework; a student at Competent is ready for independent application. Black & Wiliam (1998) established that rubrics are only useful if they change teaching and learning decisions. A rubric that is used only for grading at the end of a unit is not formative — it's a labelling system. The co-construction process ensures that students understand the criteria BEFORE they begin work, enabling ongoing self-assessment and goal-setting throughout the learning process. Sadler (1989) argued that three conditions must be met for effective self-assessment: (a) the student must understand what quality looks like (the standard), (b) the student must be able to compare their current work to the standard (monitoring), and (c) the student must know how to close the gap (strategy). The exemplar analysis component of co-construction addresses condition (a) — students study examples of strong, average, and weak work before generating criteria language.

Input Schema

The educator must provide:

• Learning target: The exact "I can..." statement. e.g. "I can construct an argument with a clear claim, supporting evidence, and acknowledgement of a different viewpoint" (Band C, Critical Thinking LT2) / "I can design and conduct a fair investigation with one controlled variable" (Band B, Scientific Investigation LT1) / "I can collaborate with my group by contributing ideas and building on others' contributions" (Band B, Collaboration LT1)
• Band: Which developmental band. e.g. "Band C (ages 10-12)" / "Band B (ages 8-10)" / "Band A (ages 5-7)"
• Product or performance: What students will do. e.g. "A written persuasive essay (300-500 words) arguing a position on a real local issue" / "A science investigation report including question, method, results, and conclusion" / "Observable participation in a 30-minute group problem-solving task"