For Teaching Writing

My Term Paper, an Interesting (to me) Discussion of Mastery Assessment in Freshman Composition

2006-11-28T15:06:00.000-08:00

Mastery Assessment in Freshman Composition: Moral and Pedagogical Opportunities

Mastery-based assessment is possible and practical in Freshman Composition.

This discussion will begin with a presentation of the moral reasons I consider mastery assessment a generally morally superior practice to conventional grading, followed by discussion of how a mastery-assessment Freshman Composition program might be structured and implemented. After this exposition, I will present some ways in which mastery assessment meets needs and goals highlighted in the literature and history of college composition, and I will note some precedents for mastery assessment. This will conclude with discussion of Peter Elbow’s recent essay “Changing Grading while Working with Grades.” Next I will present a dialogue with myself (somewhat like Plato’s “Socrates” dialogues, but without the illusion of multiple participants in the discussion, though some statements of other composition scholars are discussed) in which I attempt to bring up reasonable objections to mastery assessment in Freshman Composition and explain them away by processes more honest than hand-waving. After this dialogue I will briefly consider whether mastery assessment might also be used in secondary writing instruction, and then I will attempt to end the paper in a productive way.

A Moral Case for Mastery Assessment

My arguments for the practice of mastery assessment stem from my own principles. I acknowledge that not all my readers are likely to share all my principles (few principles are universal), but I expect that few of the reasons I present will be contrary to the principles of a significant number of caring educators. This discussion is presented as if focusing on Evangelical Christian education, taking the premises of a Bible-based worldview, but most of the contents of the discussion are equally applicable in secular education and in religious education based on different principles. While not all my moral premises may be shared by all readers, most readers are likely to find elements from the argument persuasive and deserving of implementation.

Modern American education focuses on personal achievement. Do a good job and you get an A. Get an A and you get “honors.” Get honors so that you’ll get a good job or scholarship. Do to Get. But the Apostle Paul said, “Love doesn’t seek its own” (I Cor. 13:5). Christians need to communicate a different paradigm to students than that which our culture currently communicates. True, the idea of reward for effort is a Biblical one, but Christians are directed to seek Heavenly rewards, not earthly ones—“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Believing God entails a renunciation of worldly priorities; Christians, let us not teach the world’s errors to the next generation of believers!
Instead of seeking credits and grades for advancement, students should be taught to seek competencies and opportunities for service. Creativity, instead of being directed to win acclaim (or, down the road, a place in the canon or in the high regard of experts), should be directed to communicate and execute (e.g., in professions, in charity, in relationships) the truth of the Gospel.

For this reason I advocate a mastery approach to assessment (“mastery assessment”). Assessment of some sort must occur in order to teach students responsibility and to provide accountability for diligence. The mastery approach emphasizes acquisition of competencies, which I see as a primary goal of Christian education (readers employed in secular education may consider how their goals accord), while conventional grading allows students to elect a low or high level of success, and to feel proud or inferior based on natural talent (probably every group learning situation brings in these temptations, but conventional grading, with its permanent mark of “86” or “68” or “93” [or A, B, C, or D] seems to actively promote these problems).

Mastery Assessment in Freshman Composition

Some subjects are difficult to assess in terms of mastery of competencies. For instance, writing is difficult to divide into isolated, conquerable competencies. Most graduate students in Texas Tech’s Department of English do not have flawless command of grammatical conventions (probably the most objectively and easily assessable writing competency). Perhaps competencies can be defined as pre-defined levels of skill displayed in certain areas. Accountability in writing might be provided through actual importance of assignments. For instance, letters to foreign governments urging the release of Christians imprisoned for evangelism are not to be written trivially (that is, in a style lacking gravity, formal correctness, consideration of audience, clarity of purpose, and information about the subject at issue), and the successful writing of a letter approved by the writing instructor as adequate for sending might be considered a “mastery.”

A two-semester sequence of Freshman English organized on mastery assessment in a college setting might be organized as follows:

The fundamental structure of the course is a series of varied writing projects that must meet instructor’s approval (demonstrating particular competencies or succeeding as particular types of documents). Students must pass the entire sequence of assignments to pass the class. Assignments may have individual deadlines or may all be finally due at the end of a semester. Since the alternative to meeting a deadline for a project is to retake the course, an end-of-semester deadline for all work might be appropriate (much like in a portfolio system). Students turn in work and drafts of work throughout the semester to receive feedback and eventual credit, once their drafts are satisfactory. Some competencies for mastery might be measured by dedicated projects, while others might be observed in projects dedicated to other competencies (for instance, correct comma usage might be proved in almost any writing assignment). The structure that most closely parallels the present two-semester freshman composition sequence might be a set of competencies calculated to take average students about two semesters to complete. Students sign up for the same course semester after semester until, amongst all the semesters taken, they have completed all the required projects. (This is almost a microscaling of the design of each student’s entire course of study, in which he or she must take and pass all required courses for his or her major, and may take two years or ten years to do it.) Most students will complete the project sequence in two semesters. A few might finish in one. Some will take more. Course fees will be a strong incentive to students not to linger in the program longer than necessary. Fees might be adjusted downward after the first semester according to the number of remaining competencies at the beginning of the semester, so that borderline students will not be encouraged to turn out frantically produced, barely adequate work at the close of semesters, and assessors will not be tempted to pass work that does not demonstrate competency out of misguided mercy for students. Assignments might all have a deadline of “eventually,” or individual assignments might have deadlines at specific points along the semester. All assignments should be offered every semester.

Students do not consistently attend a single class with a single teacher. Instead, they attend seminars about individual projects taught by the program instructors who grade those projects. Some general seminars (for instance, to cover minor topics over which students will not be assessed but which they should be aware of) at which attendance at some point in the semester is required might also be offered.

The concept of a general program faculty responsible together for all the students (while perhaps within that structure some have particular responsibility for certain students) is derived from the Freshman Composition program at Texas Tech University, in which I am employed. This program is headed by a director (currently Dr. Susan Lang) and two assistant directors, who devise a universal syllabus for use in all classes in the program (one for each of two levels, English 1301 and 1302). The program is structured so that it emphasizes time spent by students writing assignments over time in class (students only attend class for an hour and a half each week for a three-hour credit course). Assessment is carried out by “Document Instructors,” who grade assignments (which are turned in online) and provide extensive written feedback for student improvement. Every instructor in the program does at least some document instruction (including the director). Many instructors are also “Classroom Instructors,” who teach classes using their own lesson plans moving along the universal syllabus. Classroom Instructors have much lighter assessment loads than do pure Document Instructors. Classroom Instructors are also students’ means of appeal. If students think that their work was graded unfairly they may bring it to their Classroom Instructors for review. Grades may be further appealed to the Assistant Directors. Most of the instructors in the program are graduate students.

The universal syllabus and collective approach to instruction are ideal for a mastery-assessment system. Instructors might be assigned to teach and assess certain assignments, allowing students to receive instruction on the standards for competency demonstration from the same instructors who enforce them, so that they might know their audiences, and might direct their questions to the most knowledgeable instructors. This consistency also enables increased subjectivity in judgment of competency, since assignments are presented as satisfactory or unsatisfactory to particular instructors, rather than to the entire program. Such freedom for subjectivity might be important for enabling the program to demands higher levels of sophistication than are easily presented through checklists, rubrics, and formulae. Instructors might be assigned to teach and assess areas of their own strengths, which might enable maximally competent instruction. To employ all instructors evenly across the semester, without extreme surges and lulls in activity, every competency should be presented in workshops and its demonstration assignments accepted for assessment throughout the entire semester. This practice presents advantages to students of the possibilities of finishing quickly (or slowly), working on multiple skills or assignments at once or focusing on a single skill or assignment until mastered (according to the students’ most natural work patterns), time to revise assignments without being “left behind,” and increased communication with assessing instructors. Instructors, by focusing on one subject area, might develop their teaching and assessing practices to high levels of refinement, allowing instructors the opportunity to develop as thoughtful teachers and allowing students the opportunity to receive superior instruction.

Because of the opportunities for specialization of instructors and standardization of instruction and assessment across the program, and for the flexibility it can offer to students (particularly if, as I have suggested, students are not bound to proceed along the syllabus at equal pace with an arbitrarily-determined group of other students—their “class”), I see great promise in a Texas Tech-like collective approach to composition instruction in implementing a mastery-assessment curriculum, but mastery assessment could also be successfully employed in a traditional classroom, in which each instructor consistently teaches and grades a set group of students. Traditional classroom structure might be necessary at some smaller institutions, which might not employ enough instructors to allow specialization of instruction.

Below is a list of possible writing projects (labeled by genre, loosely defined) for a Freshman Composition course employing mastery-assessment curriculum, presented in order to present the fundamental possibility of a mastery-assessment curriculum and to suggest some practical ideas to would-be (or present) implementers of mastery-assessment instruction. One principle to consider in the design and selection of projects is that accountability can be based on positive consequences, rather than negative ones.
Service Project: A letter to an oppressive government urging the release of a political or religious prisoner. This project might be limited to the drafting of the letter, or it might include a significant research component. The completed letters would be mailed, so that focus might be on service as the reason for competence, rather than on competence for its own sake or for winning academic success.
Artistic Project: A formally-correct and thematically clear sonnet (within the bounds and taste of the instructor, who we hope is a poet or poetry scholar), achieving some particular technical goals set out by the instructor (for instance, invocation of three senses, or use of line breaks to reinterpret phrases, or relevant allusions). Students might be allowed to choose a few from among many devices taught in seminars and in course texts for use in their poems. They might be allowed to choose from among several set forms, rather than being restricted to the sonnet. The completion of this project would not prove excellence as a poet, but it would show awareness of and competency in wielding particular tools of poetical writing.
Artistic Project: Alternatively, and probably preferably, students might be required to write a formally-correct sonnet (or other poetic form) that would be published with other student poems and distributed across the program. This would allow students to approach creative writing as communication to a real audience.
Practical Project: A useable resume or job letter.
Language-Awareness Project: An accurate and coherent translation or paraphrase of a text originally written in another dialect of English, or in early modern English. This project would require research of words and phrases, close reading, and moving thoughts from the mind onto paper without loss of clarity. The process would also encourage students to think about what the English language is and how it can be used. A source text might be chosen that involves foreign cultural elements, in which case explanatory footnotes might be required.
Language-Awareness Project: An exercise in transcription of the spoken word (probably from a sound recording) might also be profitable for encouraging students to consider the nature and flexibility, as well as the usefulness of conventions, of English. This project might require students to conduct interviews, perhaps as part of an oral history project (again putting competency in its appropriate context of service). A written introduction to the transcription, explaining the context and purpose of the interview and introducing the interview subject, might also be required.
Practical Project: A timed writing exercise, on any timescale (minutes to months). If the assignment is not completed to standards within the allotted time it must be begun afresh, with the clock reset. This could be applied to almost any assignment in the curriculum in order to train students to write with deadlines, even while deadlines do not inhibit the learning of weaker students, but only their convenience.
Literature Analysis Project: Can an essay interpreting a literary text be assessed by mastery standards? Advanced students might be required to write something either accepted for publication or deemed by the instructor to be worthy of publication. Beginning students might be required to go through the motions of certain processes (e.g., freewriting, outlining), assessed based on a working knowledge of standard writing processes, rather than on the quality of their final project. Accountability for a good final product might be provided by the publication of all the students’ final essays, with distribution to all the students in the program. The competitive instinct of male students might be put to good use in this situation if all students were required to analyze one work or even one passage. Beginning students also might simply be required to write a coherent and grammatically correct analysis, perhaps based on some predetermined essay format. This does not reward student brilliance, but brilliance is usually driven by students’ interest in material, rather than in grades. I consider six-page literature analysis essays to be of very limited use in the world, and would use them sparingly, placing more emphasis on more practical writing assignments.
Persuasive Writing Project: Assigning students to write in a program webmagazine (maybe a weekly political opinion rag—I know few persons who don’t wish others would adopt their political opinions), probably with the requirement that students read the webmagazine, would give students opportunity to write persuasively in a context of real communication among peers, and to practice meeting deadlines. Blogs might be used analogously.

Students might be required to demonstrate some competencies more than once, to counter the influence of “fluke” demonstrations (especially in grammar); and to ensure that students have actually learned, and not merely happened, by some process or other, to demonstrate competencies; and to allow reinforcement of concepts learned. Repetition of competencies could be achieved by repetition of assignments, or by introduction of new assignments requiring the same vital skills, or by measurement of certain competencies (especially grammar points) in parallel with assignment general adequacy using the same assignments.

Total objectivity in assessment is unnecessary, as long as students are allowed resubmit work until it meets requirements. Part of the writing process is finding how to communicate effectively to particular readers, and part of the college and professional processes is finding how to please (not necessarily in a flattering, gutless way) certain readers. While program assessors should try to be as fair as possible, since they are dealing with real human beings who deserve to be well-treated, the possibility of subjectivity in assessing an assignment is not disastrous in a mastery-assessment system, in which students can redo work until it meets standards (however illogical or undefinable standards may sometimes seem to be).

Students need feedback when they submit drafts, both so that they can know how their writing can be improved generally and so that they can know how to continue work to meet assessment standards. Feedback, at least of the latter kind, should be offered on all submitted work. If a student tries to submit something that displays a lack of effort, rendering an outside reader not yet necessary, it should not be accepted. In an online turn-in system, assessors might elect to comment on students' drafts or return them with an automated message explaining that submission is not yet appropriate. Of course, students should be allowed to ask specific questions about drafts and ideas, either through submission of drafts with comments, or through a writing center or assessor office hours.

Affinities

Mastery-based assessment matches well the Process model of composition instruction, in that it rewards activity in the multiple stages that typically lead to the production of strong finished writing. Rewriting is a necessary part of passing the course for all or nearly all writers. Elbowian minimally-directive “facilitative” comments on the general direction of drafts, rather than on sentence-level specifics, might be easily employed by instructors on many assignments, leaving students to figure out as much as possible on their own (Straub 233). In the course of multi-draft dialogue with instructors, instructors might adapt their commenting style from extremely directive to extremely non-directive according to the needs of individual students. It must be borne in mind that the goal of draft feedback is ultimately the teaching of writing, not of skill-demonstration projects. Instructors might even (to a limited extent) avoid giving students commentary that is defined in terms of competency demonstration, focusing commentary instead on general improvement (while at times students might need directive, project requirements-driven commentary).

Let us observe some observations of Peter Elbow on grading:
It's hard to imagine a procedure more untrustworthy than conventional grading:
It is almost invariably performed by only one person.
It encourages confusion between measurement and commentary.
It disguises the many diverse features of any important performance into a single number.
As a result it is maximally misleading both to students and to outside readers.
As a further result it encourages students and the rest of the community in the myth that a person's intelligence or learning tan be summed up on one dimension. …
Grading on a curve is the worst. Curved grades give no indication whether all or none of the students have actually learned what was taught. (Bleich paragraph 26)

The deemphasis of the grade, it being an eventual matter of course after diligent effort, might answer many of these problems. Certainly, mastery assessment has none of the problems inherent to curved grading! The application of the final grade (This’ll Work) after the entire revision process and the vague meaning of prior grades (Not Yet) should reduce the “confusion between measurement and commentary.”

Mastery-assessment pedagogical tactics—motivation besides the grade (e.g., publication for friends’ eyes), running dialogue between assessor and student—can (and should, in my opinion) emphasize the idea of writing as communication. This is in keeping with the Expressivist goal, as Joseph Harris observed: “The personal was the political, and to help students find their own voices seemed one way to protest a system run amok” (26). This is certainly in keeping with goals of Christian education, which seeks to equip students to be effective agents of Christ in a fallen world. Secular educators and religious educators with different principles may consider whether this subversive empowerment fits their pedagogical goals.

I hope that any readers with Formalist sympathies will readily observe that a mastery-assessment curriculum can easily be designed to teach with a focus at the sentence level (Fulkerson 344). Mastery assessment requires problems to be conquered, not just appeased, at least in individual pieces of work. For reinforcement programs may require multiple demonstrations of competencies. Mechanical writing skills are skills that can be mastered, and, at least to the Formalist, must be mastered.

Mastery assessment may also be considered to align well with the pedagogical approach of Mina Shaughnessy: in the words of the Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing’s A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, “Mina Shaughnessy's important work, Errors and Expectations (1977) [472], argues for respect for students' home languages but also advises teachers on how to help these students become more comfortable with academic writing” (paragraph 39). In a mastery-assessment curriculum, students are not “graded down” for using their home dialects, and instructors who wish especially to affirm the value of home dialects may write comments of praise for writings in home dialects. At the same time, students can be made aware, gently, through non-acceptance of submissions for demonstrations of certain competencies (for instance, for most grammar requirements or writings for formal rhetorical situations), the appropriate rhetorical spaces for formal and non-standard English. (If writings in home dialects can satisfy certain competencies, instructors and program directors might consider accepting them in such cases, in order to further communicate the need for different uses of language in different rhetorical situations.)

Instruction in Applied Music in universities now is taught in what is essentially a mastery-assessment system (though one structured much differently than my proposed Freshman Composition Program, though imitation of Applied Music instruction structure in Freshman Composition might be worth consideration by somebody sometime, since the structure is highly effective for teaching musical expression skills). Students are expected to be punctual and diligent and show reasonable improvement in their lessons, and if they do so they are awarded A’s. A B signifies a serious warning. So grading of lessons is meaningless except as communication to students whether they are on track. In order to graduate, applied music majors must present recitals. Recitals are graded on a pass-fail basis with high standards for the level of performance a graduating musician should present. Students may put off the scheduling of recitals indefinitely until they and their teachers are confident in their preparation. Since musical performance is also a form of communication and art, as is writing, the practices of musical educators might not be dismissed out-of-hand by writing teachers. The overlap in pedagogical aims and practices between these two disciplines deserves consideration in another paper.

The modern A-B-C-D-F (E) system of grading is of recent vintage. It was introduced at Harvard in the 1880s. The scale of 0 to 100 is no older than the Nineteenth Century. For most of human history, including the parts that produced William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, the Apostle Paul, Jonathan Edwards, and Leonardo da Vinci, assessment was different (Boyd 5). In early American universities, formal assessment was provided only by a comprehensive oral examination given prior to graduation, much like the Senior Recital required of Applied Music graduates today (although usually these graduates must also pass courses in Music Theory and History). I do not suggest a return to ancient assessment models (especially not a return for kicks), but I wish to point out that the current system is not the only one that has been used with success. As Harvard and Yale stepped forward in assessment practice in the Nineteenth Century, perhaps some educators will step forward again in the Twenty-First Century.

Richard Boyd argues that origins of grading are political: “Grading has always been turned outward toward the community-at-large as much as it has inwardly focussed on student performance in the classroom; the political state and the state of education were and are inextricably linked, and grades, because they involve degrees, rank, and difference, are at the heart of the matter” (Boyd 7). After offering an interpretation of the political history of grading, Boyd advises, “The contemporary instructor would be well advised to consider seriously the cultural legacy of his or her professional life as an evaluator of student writing. The marking of that student essay with a grade is not an insignificant, nor apolitical, gesture” (15). Mastery-based assessment is equally political. It promotes a different ideal than does the current graduated system of grading. Mastery assessment says (if I may personify it for a moment), “Nobody, not even the professor, is here to judge. What we’re here to do is build ability. We have some particular abilities in mind to acquire, and we’ll keep track of which abilities we have as we obtain them.” No A students, no C students, just students learning and graduates competent. Certainly, students will not all instantly become angels, but mastery assessment says, “We’re not here to identify angels. We’re here to equip people, making provision for the difficulties, internal and external, that individuals face.” My readers may consider whether this is the political message they wish to bring to their students, or whether they believe students should be formally and permanently ranked.

Peter Elbow on Mastery Assessment

In a recent essay entitled “Changing Grading while Working with Grades,” Peter Elbow endorsed mastery assessment. Elbow’s “Final Comment” nicely summarizes the difference between mastery assessment and conventional grading practice.
“I have been implying a visual metaphor in my suggestions: less of the vertical (minimal grading); more of the horizontal (using criteria). But I would point out that my suggestions also imply a move away from the tradition of measuring or norm-based assessment toward the tradition of mastery or criteria-based assessment. Measuring or norm-based assessment involves making a single complex master all-determining decision about each student so as to place him or her at one spot along a tall one-dimensional line. All are strung out along a single vertical line—each at an exact distance above or below every other student. Mastery or criteria-based assessment, on the other hand, implies multiple simpler decisions about each student so that all are placed in a complicated multidimensional intersecting space—each student being strong in certain abilities, okay in others, and weak in yet more—with different students having different constellations of strengths and weaknesses. (183)

“Minimal Grading” is grading that classifies student work in more broadly-defined categories than are traditional (conventional grading uses eleven categories, from A+ to E or F). “Explicit Criteria” grading is grading that brings assessment into a two-dimensional space, replacing a general grade for an entire piece with a set of grades for different aspects of the piece, or for different competencies represented. Elbow’s piece approaches minimal and explicit criteria (competency) grading in terms of evaluation of individual pieces of student writing. This essay considers grading across a student’s entire semester’s work; unlike “Changing Grading,” this essay will discuss creation of curriculum based on mastery assessment. Elbow presents a vision of minimal grading that limits grades to three or four levels (much like three-tiered assessment in graduate seminars) (174). My reduction of grading to only two levels, demonstration and nondemonstration of competency applies the principle of minimal grading only slightly more rigorously. I see the argument for two-tiered grading, as opposed to three- or four-tiered grading, based primarily on the principle of “Grade the Learning, Not the Writing” (in the words of Cherryl Smith and Angus Dunstan) applied in the context of a Freshman Composition curriculum designed in terms of the set of competencies that students are expected to master (according to the standards and goals of particular institutions of higher learning and their Composition directors) (Smith and Dunstan 163).

Objections to Mastery Assessment in Freshman Composition

One objection my own mind has made to the practice of mastery assessment is that mastery assessment recognizes adequacy rather than excellence. This is a fair critique. I will bring a two-part answer.
1) Formal education is about preparation; it is not an end in itself. This is, again, speaking from my own premises, that formal education should be calculated to equip students for lives of useful service to their God, their families, their communities, and whatever parts of the globe God may call them to, through their professions and their unpaid lives. This equipping should happen both by the acquisition of skills, the “competencies” measured in mastery assessments, and by the formation of productive work and thought habits. Education should be thought of as the learning of competencies for use outside of the school setting. Our current grade-based educational system encourages students to approach their education only in terms of how to succeed within the school context. A deprioritization of “success” in the school context, with instead an emphasis on the nature of school as preparation for success outside the school context, may help to instill a proper perspective in students. This will actually promote excellence in academic endeavors, because the endeavors cease to be a high-stakes Monopoly game that is played for eighteen or twenty-two years and then abandoned, and become noble work toward the promotion of the Kingdom of God.
2) Students seeking excellence in their own education (certainly no assessment system can force students to be excellent) can still seek excellence through non-transcript (perhaps even graded) activities, and through seeking certification in more than the requisite number of competencies, or through seeking to reach competencies quickly. Still, however, the goal is to encourage students to approach education as preparation, as opposed to “chance to get ahead (or fall behind).” Ideally, students should be seeking excellence outside of their formal education, through service work; private reading of literature that interests them or other study according to personal interest (perhaps in reading/learning communities, which might be fostered by the school); meaningful time with their families, friends, and churches; and development of competencies in areas that the school may not be equipped to offer, such as equestrian skills, ethnic cooking, electrical wiring, rock and roll singing, etc. (pick something cool or productive); or working to earn some money and experience. I see the excellent student not as the one who spends his evenings, lunches, and Sundays at his desk, trying to perfect an essay that only one or two other persons in the entire world will ever see, but one who completes his work capably and uses the skills he has learned and the broader perspectives he has earned to pursue his own personal opportunities for servant-living, in whatever contexts are his own (which may be more or less academic). In the present system, B students are inferior to A students, because they have not spent so much time (sometimes an inordinate amount of time) at the desk. A students often must sacrifice their own opportunities and interests to work away in large amounts of time and effort to maintain their status of superiority while sometimes B-level investment is most appropriate for a given student, especially outside the student’s major. “This too is vanity and a great evil,” as Solomon said.

Another reasonable objection to raise is that a mastery-based curriculum prevents instructors from offering incentives and rewards for participation in discussion, improvement, unusually high individual investment in the subject (the difference between a 91 and a 99), and general brilliance. I answer that
In my own experience as a student, as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and as a student in an academically elite independent high school, students do not participate constructively in subjectively graded activities for the sake of grades. Students that care about the subject (or for its own sake love discussion, which is a subject unto itself) will participate constructively, and others will fake it, at best. Removing the possibility of grades for things like class participation, creative thinking, and improvement will not significantly alter this dynamic. No more than a minimum level of involvement can be caused by grades (or likely even significantly influenced by them), and this same kind of involvement can be brought about equally well in a mastery-assessment system. Attendance at certain discussion meetings (probably with a consistent group of classmates) might easily be considered a course requirement, another “competency.” To combat passive-aggressive or blatantly aggressive attendance, discussion leaders might have the option to not count present students who are disruptive (or unresponsive, or even quiet, if the program director wants to be aggressive about it), and, of course, the option to ask disruptive students to leave (with, perhaps, a lower threshold to “disruption” than is common in current classrooms).

Another reasonable objection to mastery assessment is the argument that setting appropriate standards for competencies is much more difficult than grading, especially grading holistically. Also, the level of competency required might be hard to definitely establish. I answer that
Grading systems must also establish a level for adequacy, which is contained in a particular grade mark (often a 70). This practice only differs from the practice in mastery assessment in that it is less intentional. Surely it is better to thoughtfully instruct our students.
“You don’t mean to say that you want all students to work at a C level!”
Heaven forbid! Probably required competency should match up with what is now somewhere in the B range. Earning a C in a course doesn’t typically demonstrate competency in anything. Let us require our students to actually learn what we have set out that they are to learn, and not reward them for merely seeming to be aware of the course content.
This has turned into a question-and-answer session. “Do you mean to say that you expect every student to work on a B or even A level?”
I expect students to learn. If they don’t learn, they might as well not come. If meaningful learning is not represented until some high grade level in some classrooms and programs, so be it. If requiring meaningful learning requires holding students to a higher standard in general, perhaps it is about time.
“That sounds Draconian.”
Not at all (not to shoot you down). Students must be approached with patience. A major part of the beauty of the mastery-assessment system is that it allows students to make mistakes in the learning process without them going onto their permanent record, and it allows students to work largely at their own pace. Every college student, except perhaps a tiny number with serious disabilities (who might be accommodated), should be able to eventually learn the content of Freshman Composition. They should not be allowed to pretend that they have learned the content until they have learned it. It is the role of the program instructors to help them in whatever way possible to learn it.
“Is this all-or-nothing approach to the course appropriate? After all, no one has total mastery of all forms of English (except God).”
No. An all-or-nothing approach to English is not appropriate. But Freshman Composition cannot try to teach total mastery of English expression. Mina Shaughnessy puts it well: “Writing is something writers are always learning to do. When we speak, therefore, of a student’s ‘learning’ to write we have in mind that student’s reaching a level of proficiency that seems appropriate for his age and situation but not the level he will be confined to for the rest of his life” (276). Freshman Composition can teach the fundamental skills of effective formal writing in English (thinking skills, mechanical skills, audience-appeasement skills—whatever skills the writing program directors or instructors value). No student should be without these skills. If some skills are to be offered in the course that are not fundamental (for instance, the formal aspects of sonnets or précis), program directors might consider requiring students to master only a set number of non-fundamental skills, allowing students to choose those extra skills they find most important or appealing or requiring little effort. The mastery-assessed course might be likened to a course of study in a given major. All necessary courses must be passed for graduation. It might take three years or ten years. Some courses are taken by all the students in the major, while some are electives from designated lists of acceptable choices, chosen to fill designated elective slots.

Another reasonable objection is that competency demonstration projects encourage students to write formulaically, without individual voice or creativity. I cannot quickly dismiss this worry. I will say that
The cultivation of creativity or voice in any class depends largely on the value that the instructor sets on it. If an instructor grades based on how closely students’ work meets his or her expectations, individual voice and creativity are likely to be stifled. If an instructor grades based on an honest look at the content, stylistic features, and execution of students’ work, individual voice and creativity will be encouraged. If assignments in a competency-demonstration curriculum prove to be more narrowly geared to certain forms of expression, that does not necessarily rule out or even inhibit student individuality in writing. Sonnets and villanelles, highly restrictive forms, have been employed with great individuality and artistic power by many of the most prestigious poets, many of whom have considered form an enabling, rather than stifling, restriction.

“Okay. One more question. Thank you for your answers; they have been helpful. My question is: Speck and Jones quote W. McDonald as saying, ‘The inherent failure of the grading process… [occurs when] we are forced to reduce a complex of observations and responses and assessments to a single symbol, the letter grade, a manifest impossibility for a composition course’ (Speck and Jones 19). I agree with McDonald. And if a piece can not be summarized by a choice among five, or one hundred, possible marks, how can it be summarized by a choice among two?”
This is a difference between Mastery assessment and current grading practice. Current grading practice tries to summarize the quality of student writing. I also agree with McDonald; it probably can’t be done. But the more important question to me is, Why would you want to? (summarize the quality of a piece of writing, I mean). Unlike a grade, all the passage or non-passage of a submitted piece of writing in a mastery-assessment system signifies is the demonstration of some predefined (and, we dream, precommunicated) competency. It makes no attempt to evaluate writing as writing. Excellent writing might not be related to the competency, and though the piece be the next Faust it doesn’t demonstrate competency in précis form. No hard feelings, exuberant praise in instructor’s comments, no F for writing something good off-topic (as graded students often experience). Something may be nigh unquestionably folly, but if it demonstrates good comma use it demonstrates good comma use. Passage of that competency should not be understood (or presented) as praise of the writing as writing.
“Hold on! Do you want students to write trash, competency by competency?”
Not really, but it’s one of many ways to learn some skills, skills that are useful for quality writing in less artificial situations in the students’ futures (personal and formal letters, term papers, research reports, great American novels). Incentives outside the competency checklist, such as publication of pieces for peers’ reading, readings of papers in class, written comments on submitted pieces, and students’ own communicative and artistic goals may be enough to prompt many students to aspire to excellence. Assignments on the Expressivist model, assignments for writing on personal subjects, might be well-chosen as a significant part of a mastery-assessment curriculum. Composition programs could consider requiring a certain level of general quality in all submissions that achieve passage of a competency; that is, a competency demonstration submission must not only demonstrate the specified competency, but must also be of at least certain level of general quality (for instance, that now represented by a grade of 80, or 72). In such a circumstance, general quality could be determined by assessors in the same way that grades are now assigned based on general quality of work. Note that even in this scheme of assessment student work is not ranked and no permanent mark to encourage pride or lack of hope for success in students, but rather a certain kind of competency, that of writing something reasonably okay, is required in every passed submission.

Generalizing Still Further

Mastery-assessment curricula might also be used to teach writing at the secondary level. The typical marriage of literature study with writing instruction encountered in high schools would likely alter the competency lists (which might The year-by-year stratified progression of typical high school curricula and the need many high schools feel to keep their students in highly-structured situations might inhibit the ability of students to learn at varying paces, making the achievement of mastery of concepts by all students more difficult. Whether this is an argument against mastery assessment or against current secondary English curriculum structuring may be judged only by high school teachers and administrators. The psychological and moral-development reasons for mastery assessment may be more important for teenagers than for any other people, so some restructuring of programs to accommodate these priorities might deserve consideration.

What’s Next?

This discussion of mastery assessment is, of course, incomplete. I have not begun to deal with the realities created or reflected by grades in current practice. I have not presented examples of specific pieces of student writing analyzed in terms of competency demonstration. I have not addressed the questions of defining competencies or of setting standards. I have not presented extensive description and consideration of currently-existing analogues to my proposed system. Incomplete as it is, I hope that this piece succeeds in encouraging readers to consider mastery assessment and the pedagogical opportunities it offers.

Pedagogy is neither apolitical nor amoral. The ways in which a subject is taught and the ways in which students are assessed and motivated imply statements about the subject matter and endorsements of behaviors. Will students be rewarded or “corrected” for subversive writing? What will the assignments we choose to require communicate to students about the purposes and uses of written communication? What do one-dimensional transcript marks say about people, and what realities do they reflect or fail to reflect, or cause? Is it honest to employers or to students to say that one student is an “A” student and another is a “C” student? Is it honest to employers or to students to pass students out of a course when important learning objectives of the course have not been met? Is it fair to students of diverse backgrounds and learning styles to deal out permanent transcript marks based upon when students’ learned the course content rather than whether they learned it, as may occur when students are not allowed to resubmit revisions? Should instructors judge students, or only teach them? Can teachers and administrators responsibly ignore the political and moral content of their pedagogical choices?

Works Cited
Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing. A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition. 5th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin's Press: 2000. 17 November 2006 http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/bb/history.html.

Bleich, David. Rev. of Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching, by Peter Elbow. ADE Bulletin 093 (Fall 1989): 44-45. 15 Nov. 2006 <http://www.mla.org/ade/bulletin/n093/093044.htm>.

Boyd, Richard. “The Origins and Evolution of Grading Student Writing.” Zak and Weaver 3-16.

Elbow, Peter. “Changing Grading while Working with Grades.” Zak and Weaver 171-184.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Four Philosophies of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 30 (1979): 343-348.

Harris, Joseph. A Teaching Subject: Composition since 1966. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations. 1977. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Smith, Cherryl and Angus Dunstan. “Grade the Learning, Not the Writing.” Zak and Weaver 163-170.

Speck, Bruce W. and Tammy R. Jones. “Directions in the Grading of Writing.” Zak and Weaver 17-29.

Straub, Richard. “The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of ‘Directive’ and ‘Facilitative’ Commentary.” College Composition and Communication 47 (1996): 223-251.

Zak, Frances and Christopher C. Weaver, eds. The Theory and Practice of Grading Writing. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.

New Topic, Less Huge: Mastery

2006-11-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

I have changed my topic. My other one was way too big, and I'd rather write about it when I'm older. My new topic is mastery-based assessment, especially as it might be employed in Freshman Composition. The beginning of this post is an argument for mastery assessment, and the end of it is an outline of how Freshman Composition might be organized in a mastery system.

Mastery-based assessment is possible and practical in Freshman Composition.

This discussion, in present form, focuses on Evangelical Christian education, taking the premises of a Bible-based worldview. While these premises may not be shared by all readers, most readers are likely to find elements from the argument persuasive and deserving of implementation.

Modern American education focuses on personal achievement. Do a good job and you get an A. Get an A and you get “honors.” Get honors so that you’ll get a good job or scholarship. Do to Get. But the Apostle Paul said, “Love doesn’t seek its own.” We need to communicate a different paradigm to students than our culture does. True, the idea of reward for effort is a Biblical one. But Christians are to seek Heavenly rewards, not earthly ones. God says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Believing God entails a renunciation of worldly priorities; let us not teach the world’s errors to the next generation of believers!

Instead of seeking credits and grades for advancement, students should be taught to seek competencies and opportunities for service. Creativity, instead of being directed to win acclaim (or, down the road, a place in the canon or in the high regard of experts), should be directed to communicate and execute (e.g., in professions, in charity, in relationships) the truth of the Gospel.

For this reason I advocate a mastery approach to assessment. Assessment of some sort must occur in order to teach students responsibility and to provide accountability for diligence. The mastery approach emphasizes acquisition of competencies, which I see as a primary goal of Christian education, while conventional grading allows students to elect a low or high level of success, and to feel proud or inferior based on natural talent (probably every group learning situation brings in these temptations, but conventional grading, with its permanent mark of “86” or “68” or “93” seems to actively promote these problems).

Some subjects are difficult to assess in terms of mastery of competencies. For instance, writing is difficult to divide into isolated, conquerable competencies. Most graduate students in Texas Tech’s Department of English do not have flawless command of grammatical conventions (probably the most objectively and easily assessible writing competency). Perhaps competencies can be defined as pre-defined levels of skill displayed in certain areas. Accountability in writing might be provided through actual importance of assignments. For instance, letters to foreign governments urging the release of Christians imprisoned for evangelism are not to be written trivially, and the successful writing of a letter allowed by the writing instructor as adequate for sending might be considered a “mastery.”

A two-semester sequence of Freshman English organized on mastery assessment in a college setting might be organized as follows:

The fundamental structure of the course is a series of varied writing projects that must meet instructor’s approval. Students must pass the entire sequence of assignments to pass the class. Assignments may have individual deadlines or may all be finally due at the end of a semester (or even a multisemester sequence, with students signing up for the same course semester after semester until, amongst all the semesters taken, they have completed all the required projects). Since the alternative to meeting a deadline for a project is to retake the course, an end-of-semester deadline for all work might be appropriate (much like in a portfolio system). Students turn in work and drafts of work throughout the semester to receive feedback and eventual credit, once their drafts are satisfactory. Some competencies for mastery might be measured by dedicated projects, while others might be observed in projects dedicated to other competencies (for instance, correct comma usage might be proved in almost any writing assignment).

Students do not consistently attend a single class with a single teacher. Instead, they attend seminars about individual projects taught by the program instructors who grade those projects. Some general seminars (for instance, to cover minor topics over which students will not be assessed but which they should be aware of) at which attendance at some point in the semester is required might also be offered.

Some possible projects for a Freshman Composition course include:

A letter to an oppressive government urging the release of a political or religious prisoner. This project might be limited to the drafting of the letter, or it might include a significant research component. The completed letters would be mailed, so that focus might be on service as the reason for competence, rather than on competence for its own sake or for winning academic success.
A formally-correct and thematically clear sonnet (within the bounds and taste of the instructor, who we hope is a poet or poetry scholar), achieving some particular technical goals set out by the instructor (for instance, invokation of three senses, or use of line breaks to reinterpret phrases, or relevant allusions). Students might be allowed to choose a few from among many devices taught in seminars and in course texts for use in their poems. They might be allowed to choose from among several set forms, rather than being restricted to the sonnet. The completion of this project would not prove excellence as a poet, but it would show awareness of and competency in wielding particular tools of poetical writing.
Alternatively, and probably preferably, students might be required to write a formally-correct sonnet (or other poetic form) that would be published with other student poems and distributed across the program. This would allow students to approach creative writing as communication to a real audience.
A useable resume or job letter.
An accurate and coherent translation or paraphrase of a text originally written in another dialect of English, or in early modern English. This project would require research of words and phrases, close reading, and moving thoughts onto paper without loss of clarity. The process would also encourage students to think about what the English language is and how it can be used. A source text might be chosen that involves foreign cultural elements, in which case explanatory footnotes might be required.
An exercise in transcription of the spoken word (probably from a sound recording) might also be profitable for encouraging students to consider the nature and flexibility, as well as the usefulness of conventions, of English. This project might require students to conduct interviews, perhaps as part of an oral history project (again putting competency in its appropriate context of service). An introduction to the transcription, explaining the context and purpose of the interview and introducing the interview subject, might also be required.
Can an essay interpreting a literary text be assessed by mastery standards? Advanced students might be required to write something either accepted for publication or deemed by the instructor to be worthy of publication. Beginning students might be required to go through the motions of certain processes (e.g., freewriting, outlining), assessed based on a working knowledge of standard writing processes, rather than on the quality of their final project. Accountability for a good final product might be provided by the publication of all the students’ final essays, with distribution to all the students in the program. The competitive instinct of male students might be put to good use in this situation if all students were required to analyze one work or even one passage. Beginning students also might simply be required to write a coherent and grammatically correct analysis, perhaps based on some predetermined essay format. This does not reward student brilliance, but brilliance is usually driven by students’ interest in material, rather than in grades. I consider six-page literature analysis essays to be of very limited use in the world, and would use them sparingly, placing more emphasis on more practical writing assignments.
Accountability can be based on positive consequences, rather than negative ones. Assigning students to write in a program webmagazine (maybe a weekly political opinion rag--I know few persons who don’t wish others would adopt their political opinions), probably with the requirement that students read the webmagazine, would give students opportunity to write persuasively in a context of real communication among peers, and to practice meeting deadlines. Blogs might be used analogously.

Total objectivity in assessment is unnecessary, as long as students are allowed resubmit work until it meets requirements. Part of the writing process is finding how to communicate effectively to particular readers, and part of the college and professional processes is finding how to please (not necessarily in a flattering, gutless way) certain readers. While program assessors should try to be as fair as possible, since they are dealing with real human beings who deserve to be well treated, the possibility of subjectivity in assessing an assignment is not disastrous in a mastery system, in which students can redo work until it meets standards (however illogical or undefinable standards may sometimes seem to be).

Students need feedback when they submit drafts, both so that they can know how their writing can be improved generally and so that they can know how to continue work to meet assessment standards. Feedback, at least of the latter kind, should be offered on all submitted work. If a student tries to submit something that displays a lack of effort, rendering an outside reader not yet necessary, it should not be accepted. In an online turn-in system, assessors might elect to comment on students drafts or return them with an automated message explaining that submission is not yet appropriate. Of course, students should be allowed to ask specific questions about drafts and ideas, either through submission of drafts with comments, or through a writing center or assessor office hours.

Outline for writing on a topic about which I am not qualified to write authoritatively

2006-10-31T16:38:00.000-08:00

To add to my freewriting from the last post, I post a draft of an outline. This has the problem of being too broad in scope (these are probably enough topics for a book), and of not yet involving historical or critical situation of the topic and approach. Those are forthcoming. If anyone has ideas on how to limit this, I am interested.

Evangelical Christian Education for the American Culture Wars of the Twenty-First Century

Why Evangelical Education?
priorities
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God”

Challenges of the Twenty-First Century American Church
evangelism
morality
stewardship
service

Isn’t that the church’s job?
It’s the Church’s job!

Parents

Curriculum –based not on current academic subdivisions, but on needs of the students as members of the Church militant in the Twenty-First Century

Prayer
full integration of recognition of the presence and power of God

Bible Study

Biography

Arts
worship and communication supplant Romanticism and pleasure

Communicative Tools
writing, drawing, and languages

Missions and Evangelism
“FAITH” evangelism training

Trade and Practical Skills
electricians, mechanics, academics, artists
exposure to reality of the profession
Christian mentors

Service
mindset of service must replace the mindset of personal achievement promoted by common secular education system

Methods
inter-age-group interaction—teaching, support
grading and assessment—variety: emphasis on mastery approach, also some unschooling, conventional grading systems
personal education—parents, students, school administration, and teachers in collaboration to define curriculum and standards for individual students
cross-cultural and cross-epochal interactions and perspectives

Social Dynamics and Dilemmas
dating
isolation
workload
discipline

Traps and Difficulties
pride
accountability
“fairness”
budget needs
persecution
accreditation

Some Preliminary Musing and Blasting on My 20-Pager Topic

2006-10-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

This is a little writing somewhere between freewriting and "angry draft" on my 20-pager topic. I have also made an outline, but it looks like the table of contents of a fair-sized book, so I need to trim it somehow. I may focus on ideological implications for assessment.

Why Evangelical Education?
As Christians, we are aliens in this world. James said, “friendship with the world is enmity with God.” Christ said that His followers, like Himself, are “not of this world.” Christians are called to live by the two great commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and by the Great Commission, “Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” This is not the purpose the world’s people see in their lives. They are not seeking to love our God, their ability to love their neighbor is severely hindered, and they certainly are not out to bring the Gospel to all nations for the conversion of the people (note reference to baptism, which implies conversion). What Christian parents want their children to seek in life is not what the world’s people (be they secular humanist, Muslim, Hindu, or worksless [“cultural”] “Christian”) want their children to seek. Christian life is not about material comfort, not about making everybody like you, not about pursuit of this or this other kind of knowledge, not about stacking up impressive achievements, certainly not about being “up-to-date.” How can Christian children be educated the world’s way?
Yes, let us acknowledge and learn from what the world has done well (all people are made in God’s image, after all), and God forbid that we cut off all interaction with the people God has sent us to save. But let us not make the next generation of Christians the casualities in the culture war. Education is for getting educated. If our kids should evangelize in the public schools, send them there to evangelize, not to be taught the world’s assumptions about value. Children (even teenagers) can not always, or even usually, be depended upon to discern good from evil in the complexities of the devil’s subterfuges (it is difficult for adults). As we judge that our children have discretion we should allow them opportunity to apply it, but we should not throw a weak lamb among wolves, or even among domesticated dogs. To do otherwise is short-sighted; our children may win a few souls, they may touch a few lives, but the lifelong effectiveness born out of totally Christ-centered thinking is sacrificed.
By “evangelicals” I mean all Christians that believe in the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, hold the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, are committed to obedience to the Great Commission, and have decided to live their lives based on their faith, rather than upon the whims of their minds or their surroundings (however imperfectly they succeed). I am aware that many Christians who are members of denominations not traditionally considered “evangelical” are among those to whom I am referring. Except where I say differently, I will use the word “Christian” to mean the Evangelical understanding of Christianity.
Evangelical education will seek to make children, with evil bound up in their hearts, as Solomon observed, into powerful warriors for the cross in their lifetimes, equipped with a Christian outlook, experience in service and evangelism, and analytical and practical skills and knowledge for successful service, in the local church, in the family, in the professional world, in the United States, and on the mission field.

Why not send kids to secular schools and then teach Christian approaches at home?
For some Christians, this may be the best option available. But as an ideal, it leaves much to be desired, If a student learns to read from a secular perspective, he must individually unlearn and relearn the art of reading to fit it into his Christ-centered life. But if a student learns to read according to Christian purpose, he can immediately apply the skill effectively in Christian life, and can
The issue of trust is also significant. To whom should Christian parents entrust the education of their children? There are individual nonbelievers who can be trusted, certainly, with this or that, probably even with math teaching or violin lessons, and Christians should be willing to use these resources when God gives them, and to use the goodness of natural men to bring them to knowledge of the goodness of God. But is the world to be trusted with choosing all our children’s academic teachers, with designing the curriculum that our children come to understand knowledge through, with half our children’s waking hours? Sometimes this may be a choice that believing parents are called to make (for instance, when both parents must work in order to make ends meet and no Christian school is available, or when a well-grounded Christian teenager should follow an unusual academic interest only served within a secular school), but is not the opportunity of a Christian school far better?

The goal of this paper is to outline an approach for use by an Evangelical secondary school in early Twenty-First Century America to bring Christian teenagers to maximum readiness for effective Christian service upon graduation.

Modern American education focuses on personal achievement. Do a good job and you get an A. Get an A and you get “honors.” Get honors so that you’ll get a good job or scholarship. Do to Get. But the Apostle Paul said, “Love doesn’t seek its own.” We need to communicate a different paradigm to students than our culture does. True, the idea of reward for effort is a Biblical one. But Christians are to seek Heavenly rewards, not earthly ones. God says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Believing God entails a renunciation of worldly priorities; let us not teach the world’s errors to the next generation of believers!
Instead of seeking credits and grades for advancement, students should be taught to seek competencies and opportunites for service. Creativity, instead of being directed to win acclaim (or, down the road, a place in the canon or in the high regard of experts), should be directed to communicate and execute (e.g., in professions, in charity, in relationships) the truth of the Gospel.
For this reason I generally advocate a mastery approach to assessment. Assessment of some sort must occur in order to teach students responsibility and to provide accountability for dilligence. The mastery approach emphasizes acquistion of competencies, which I see as a primary goal of Christian education, while conventional grading allows students to elect a low or high level of success, and to feel proud or inferior based on natural talent (probably every group learning situation brings in these temptations, but conventional grading, with its permanent mark of “86” or “68” or “93” seems to actively promote these problems).
Some subjects are difficult to assess in terms of mastery of competencies. For instance, writing is difficult to divide into isolated, conquerable competencies. Most graduate students in Texas Tech’s Department of English do not have flawless command of grammatical conventions (probably the most objectively and easily assessible writing competency). Perhaps competencies can be defined as pre-defined levels of skill displayed in certain areas. Accountability in writing might be provided through actual importance of assignments. For instance, letters to foreign governments urging the release of Christians imprisoned for evangelism are not to be written trivially, and the successful writing of a letter allowed by the writing instructor as adequate for sending might be considered a “mastery.”

(What I see is Reduction through Description.)

2006-10-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

This statement really bugs me: "Before I took this course I was just Joe; now I am Joe who used to be poor.” Does it bother anybody else?

What my video was supposed to do: Guts, Restraint, and Clarity

2006-10-14T01:25:00.000-07:00

[Now that I'm behind, the content of this has to be a little altered (but not a lot).]

Many of us attended last Friday's workshop on using iMovie, and we've all spend some time reviewing video examples. Your 3-minute core composition keyword video is due on 10/5. What is your topic, and how are you going to approach it? What are you thinking of including?

My topic is Expressive Writing. I defined this concept in my video this way:

"It’s writing you do that’s meant to meet your own needs, instead of to meet the needs of readers. When we write to tell something, that’s what we’ll call “communicative writing,” because it’s meant to communicate. When we write to say something, we’ll call that “expressive writing,” because it’s meant to express things. "

My video is designed for a teacher's use on one of the first class days with a highschool English class or a Freshman Composition class (in traditional format, not using Topic). It presents background information for assignments across the course of a course grounded largely in Process pedagogy.

I remembered writing assignments I did in high school and college in which I wrote something I thought had a lot of value, but turned out to not fit the mold the professor had in mind. I lost lots and lots of points, and I felt unjustly treated. 1) because I had followed the instructions as I understood them, and 2) because I believed in what I had written, both form and content, and considered the professor's dismissal a dismissal of my perspective. I may have been right or wrong, but that's how I felt. As I imagine myself in front of an English class, I say that I want students to know that their perspective matters. And I say to myself that they are not even vaguely perfect, and wouldn't need to go to English class if they were expert thinkers and writers. So I have developed a plan to both express value and teach effectiveness. This is what I say about it in my video:

"We’ll do freewriting, where you just write whatever for a few minutes, maybe about some particular topic, and we’ll do some blogging –everybody’s gonna have a blog –, and the first drafts of your big essays won’t get grades –they’ll just get an A for effort and some comments for how to make the ideas you have expressed into communications, which is what essays are... So, on expressive writing assignments, the idea is to get your thoughts out; get ‘em on paper, get ‘em organized. A lot of these assignments you might not even get feedback on, or grades, because the point won’t be to show Mr. Teacher how much you know or to show anybody else anything else, but to just help you get your thoughts worked out so that you learn the stuff we’re learning well, and so when it comes time to show somebody something you’re in good shape to do that, ‘cause you know what you think. On your essays, like I said, you’re going to get an “angry draft” to get you going, with an A for effort, before your first draft that gets graded for what it says as a communicative piece. "

If that's a lot of text and you don't want to read all that quotation on a blog, I'm on your side. That was a weak ploy to encourage you to Watch my video! http://www.richrice.com/5060/. It's not long, you know!

I also hope that by separating expression and communication I can encourage responsibility in students for their words. If students are told that there is value in their perspectives (which I believe), through the inclusion of expressive writing assignments that assessed as such, as well as by other means, they will be more inclined to develop their own ideas, and follow their own curiosity. At the same time, emphasis on the audience's needs in communicative writing encourages consideration of the effects of words. My goal is that students be able to write with guts, restraint, and clarity.

Synthesis of Process, Shaughnessy, and 19th Century Harvard

2006-10-12T01:37:00.000-07:00

We've come a long way so far in studying the history and theory of composition. We've studied the influence of formalism, expresivism, and social-construction on the field of composition in general and on our program in particular, especially with technology. After reviewing Bedford/St.Martin's "History of Rhetoric and Composition," you should have a more complete picture of key ideas in composition history. Even though your teaching philosophy essay may not focus on composition, specifically, which ideas from the history of composition are influencing your ideas about what good teaching is the most? Include direct quotations.

I'm learning a lot through consideration of expressivism. I am a big believer in emphasis on the connection between academic studies and the lives of students, and so writing assignments based on a student's own ideas and passions seems appropriate to me. Pure personal expression, without regard to audience, is often irresponsible writing, and many or most communications in life (inside and outside the university) are occasioned by specific needs (evaluation, information, intra-familial life-sharing), so a certain amount of restriction, even arbitrary (though we might hope for some good excuse), may be desirable.

I see Process pedagogy as sharing much in common with the Socratic method, in that both design to lead students to discover the course content, and avoid feeding it to them. I've participated in many classes conducted largely on the Socratic method, and I've always felt that I learned the most in such classes. Certainly, some things are difficult to teach Socratically, but the method has power. I see this same power in Process pedagogy.

With the Dartmouth Expressivists, per the Bedford Bibliography's summary, I agree that "writing instruction should emphasize self-expressive uses of language," because writing should not be restricted in students' lives to a school activity, and because I believe students, no less than anyone else, and the persons students will become, bring ideas to the table that deserve expression.

I agree with Mina Shaughnessy (not to suddenly declare her an Expressivist) that teachers and curricula should show "respect for students' home languages," and also enable students to be "comfortable with academic writing." My reasons may differ from hers. I constantly encounter power in idiosyncrasy and non-standard English, and I doubt that the person who communicates most comfortably in non-standard English can express the fullness of his or her understanding of the world in academic English. Of course, persons may be, to varying extents, multilingual, and persons' languages of choice may change over time. I would rather not force the latter on any adult as a condition for college graduation and entry into the professional world. At the same time, fluency in standard English as a second language seems important for all professionals in the U.S., and so seems a more reasonable requirement. The difference between the two goals, language-switching and language acquirement, should probably be pointed out to students, so that the compliant among them will be encouraged to speak out of their own heritage, and so that the hard-headed among them will not wage a just revolt against the suppression of their heritage.

A reading knowledge of standard English is probably more important than a writing knowledge, for all persons in the English-speaking world, and so I see value in the 19th Century Harvard idea of "lists of standard authors," though, again, perhaps not for the reasons the position was originally held. I see value in the study of chronologically, geographically, and stylistically diverse classics in terms of the value of literature approached on its own terms (as opposed to in deconstruction), in terms of its value in yielding ideas to enable students to write expressively, and, contradiction of horrors, as a source for rules for the government of standard English. When standard English is approached as a trade language rather than an ideal, a prescriptive, rule-based approach becomes appropriate. While expression through writing needs predominantly facilitative instruction, to empower students rather than mold them, the in the writing of the trade language the concept of "English composition, correct in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and expression" is well-defined. A Socratic or process method of imparting the rules might be employed, but in the end the material is still largely defined by rules.

I have, I think, contradicted the idea of the Expressivists that the composition process involves writers "shaping their ideas through writing." I prefer to think that writers discover ideas through writing. Through the composition process writers may discover thoughts they did not know they had and connections between ideas they have not previously observed, but I do not see that these did not exist prior to composition, but rather were latent within the heritage and personal attributes of the writer and in the writer's subject material. What lie in the writer are subjective responses and connections between matters previously unjoined in expression. One might say that writers discover ideas, or that they realize ideas. Writers shape their expression and communication.

Regarding Smit's "Transfer"

2006-09-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

I wonder that Dr. Smit focuses his study of transfer on the activities of novice writers, rather than those of expert writers. If we want to understand transfer, shouldn't we consider the activities of those who succeed in realizing it, rather than the activities of those who often fail at it? Once the processes that cause transfer to occur in fact are known, pedagogical implications should be found without great difficulty. Is this not how we approach the study of grammar? (So, indeed, do our brothers and sisters in the music field approach the studies of music theory and musical performance.)

Teaching on Christ's Servant Model

2006-09-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am an evangelical Christian, and I seek to base my teaching approach on my faith. This has implications for learning objectives, curriculum, approaches to different students (who needs what, and when), grading, and, in short, every part of the teaching process that I know of (I believe no part of life should be unaffected by principles of faith, not even tooth-brushing). This post explores one dimension of Biblical implications for teaching, as it participates in defining my teaching identity.

Christianity makes a lot of servanthood. You might say it makes everything of servanthood. In the book of Philippians the Bible says that even Christ was a servant. He laid aside the glory that was His own and His due as the God who made everything, and came and became a man, less than a speck in the huge universe, and was not a rich and powerful man, but a man who helped others and suffered at the hands of other men. And then He even died, and not just any death, either. Great God died for puny person. And the apostle says, "Let this mind be in you." As a Christian, I have to take this model for my approach to teaching. The teacher is the servant of the student. In many the role of the teacher is exemplified in Christ more clearly than most other roles, since Christ was a teacher.

Christ's example does not allow the teacher to coddle students so as to mollify them. Christ spoke clearly, but challengingly. The Sermon on the Mount, preached to "His disciples," shows no restraint in demolishing preconceived notions of the students (for instance, that one should hate one's enemies). Some of Christ's teachings were so unpopular that He was eventually killed for them, but He did not spare the truth.

But Christ was no arrogant teacher. He devoted much of His time to answering student questions. In Matthew 16 He is seen asking Socratic questions (concluding, "Who say ye that I am?"), then taking the answer made by one of His students and expanding on it.

We see that Jesus included practice in application in His curriculum. He sent out students is pair (a group assignment) to go do what He had been explaining and demonstrating. He also gave particular unusual instructions for the assignment that were a part of His pedagogic plan: "And commanded them that they should take nothing for [their] journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in [their] purse." These unusual guidelines reinforced a central lesson of the assignment, dependence on God. We may also observe here that Christ put forethought into His teaching, and did not proceed wily-nily. We can look at the Parables as examples of creativity in teaching.

If Christ is the example, servanthood clearly does not mitigate authority of the teacher over the student. The servant perspective is expressed in Christ's awareness of the needs of His students, and His diligence in meeting them.

Christ believed in what He taught (He suffered for it), and did not accept sloppy thought, even as He was patient with His students and often repeated His lessons (and even His demonstrations: He fed thousands of people by multiplying just a little food twice). Certainly, His respect and enthusiasm for His subject matter was clearly displayed, and the longevity of the Christian religion suggests that it was contagious.

Christ took interest in His students as persons, and not just as pupils. He healed the incapacitated mother-in-law of Peter, and wept over the death of Lazarus. We also see that He stood by His students when they came under outside criticism. Many of His most famous lessons were responses to attacks on His students (lessons on food laws and the Sabbath). We also see that He did not correct students in public and embarrass them. When His students failed to heal a child, as the public had expected them to do, He addressed only the public in public. He did not correct His students until He was alone with them ("This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting").

I have tried to avoid discussing elements of Christ's teaching that stemmed uniquely from the particular administrative peculiarities of His school and from the specific content that He was teaching. Certainly, few modern teachers keep an inner circle that resides with the teacher and an outer circle that participates in parts of the curriculum, and no modern teachers are introducing the New Covenant to the world. What I am trying to display is Christ's general approach to teaching, which, as I have said, is the primary model for Christian servant-teaching.

If I can emulate these attitudes in my approach to my students, I think I am on the right track. I will note a few observations of mine on the application of these principles in most modern teaching situations.

Most modern teachers are not the oracle, as Christ was. Respect for truth requires the teacher to value knowledge above his own pride. Teachers must unhesitatingly admit mistakes, ignorance, and the value of good student observations. To do otherwise is to divert the focus of the curriculum away from the field of study to the learnedness of the teacher, and teaches students contempt of the field, rather than respect for it.

If a teacher values his students as persons, then he must be consciously aware that he does not know all their thoughts (unlike Christ) and does not know all their needs. He must also be aware that he cannot meet all their needs (again, unlike Christ). He must avoid demanding that students make his class a higher priority in their lives than it ought to be. This is a place where modern standardized pace of instruction can be problematic. At the same time, he should challenge his students at a level commensurate to their ability and investment, which is the respectful response to the student's desire for knowledge (respectful both to the student and field of study).

I personally value personalness in teaching, seeing it as a natural expression of Christian teaching values. The teacher who represents or approaches his role as something other than merely a person who is there to teach (for instance, as the oracle, or as a representative of the administration, or as a person on his way up in the field, or as an entertainer) has, in my opinion, departed from his role as a teacher, and has dishonored his students who have come to learn from him, and has dishonored the truth he knows and ought to teach. While different amounts of distance are appropriate for different teachers and in different teaching situations, the visibility of the humanity of the teacher seems important to maintain. Students' humanity should also be kept in the teacher's view, since one can hardly come as a servant to information receptacles or problems-waiting-to-happen or sacrifices-one-must-make-to-be-a-scholar.

This has all been pretty universal in scope, but I would hope that my particular teaching identity is defined by the application of these principles in the teaching situations where I find or put myself (a topic for another long post) and in response to my own personality, skills, and, above all, students. I see myself as a teacher as one who seeks to apply Christian ideals in actual practice. There's my summary statement of my teaching identity. More details must await more writing time, and I don't think their development and definition are near complete.

Quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

What Really Causes Bad Writing?

2006-09-14T18:05:00.000-07:00

I agree with Dr. Yagoda that the reading habits of most educated Americans need improvement, but it seems unlikely to me that this is a recent development. I haven't seen specific data, he hasn't cited specific data. But consider: before the blogs and emails and IM's were silence, spoken communication, and handwritten letters. None of those are more edited forms of communication; if anything, they are less edited. We must also note that much internet content is edited, and foxnews.com and cnn.com see plenty of hits. And the Daily Toreador is published and picked-up.

Bad writing, I think, comes fundamentally from lack of clarity of thought. Our grammar rules are mostly logical. They are applied mostly logically. No one minds a sentence fragment that belongs. Complex sentences aren't a good in themselves, but simply a tool to express meaning. The commas grammar demands in a complex sentence are the same commas expression demands. Wrong word choices are wrong meanings. Dangling modifiers are wrong meanings. I suggest that bad writing does not stem from having seen too little edited writing, but from having seen too little logical and expressive writing. Students don't need good writing to imitate. They need good thinking they think is important to communicate. The cultural trends that cause poor writing are less likely to be technology usages than to be ways of thinking: nihilism, total relativism, cowardice, laziness, arrogance, impaired self-image.

This goes back to Great Books (see the brief discussion of this topic that Dr. Rickly and I shared commenting on a previous blog post). If students see themselves as mere members of their generational herd, they have little motivation to say well, because they don't believe they have much to say. If students see themselves in a context larger than their own minds and experiences, and find transcendent principles that merit inconvenience (like proofreading, commas, personal responsibility, and martyrdom), their behavior can be expected to differ. Such persons will be harder to control in class and less accepting of established conventions, but they'll write better, and will deserve to learn to write.

Announcement

2006-09-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

I have posted a personal piece (unconnected with this class) at www.walkingunlonely.blogspot.com.

Distance as a Necessary Good

2006-09-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

I want to respond to the "Innovate" article The Distancing Question in Online Education.

Dr. Russell makes an assumption that distancing is bad. I submit that distancing can be good or bad. Has anyone ever decided to write a letter because something was too hard to say in person? I know I have. There's something to be said for limiting communication. Distance can enable intentionality. Every student who expects to succeed must prepare before class. In all the time we students in 5060 are preparing, we are being educated together, but are highly distanced from each other. That's good. There's no way I could focus to read with everybody around; I'm too extroverted. And I'd be self-conscious, too. Wouldn't you?

Distance enables focus, which Dr. Russell acknowledged, and it can also enable clarity. When I discuss a complex topic face-to-face with you or you or somebody else, I am likely to get a little confused by the time pressure. If I haven't thought about it at length, there's little telling what I'll say. But if we are discussing via email or instant message software I can edit myself. Figure something out, then articulate it, then check it and send it. It takes a little longer than face-to-face communication, but it has the advantage of not being a complete waste of time. I may also be saved both embarrassment and apologies, because my emotions are more easily veiled through the distance of pure-text communication and because I do not receive so much feedback regarding my co-conversationalist's emotions.

Emotions are an extremely important part of human life, and I would not minimize their importance! Emotions that are managed well and employed productively are the difference between great folks to work with and anybody else (who might not care, or who might get bent out of shape over not much). Some distance can be an aid to success. Different amounts of distance are appropriate at different times. If we wanted to be completely open books to everybody, we'd all walk around naked and babbling. But we choose not to (maybe you're forced; but I choose that). Sometimes people babble. Sometimes people are naked. But often we maintain more distance. The question to be considered is not, "Is distance good or bad?" and certainly not Dr. Russell's, "How can we minimize distance?" The question is, "How much of what kind of distance should we have when?" If the bomber pilots Dr. Russell mentioned had not had some distance from their victims, Hitler would still be in power. If the Nazi leaders had had less distance from their victims, perhaps Hitler would not have been a mass murderer.

I'll suggest that individual persons benefit from varying degrees of distance at different times and in different circumstances. St. Paul was said to be powerful in his letters, but unimpressive in person. St. Peter wrote much less, but probably no one has preached like him since. Some students are shy in class. They might be better served to discuss in forums like online chats and blogs. Some students are weaker writers (maybe they're engineering majors for good reason --remember poor writers also have human rights!), but have some good ideas. They can contribute more in face-to-face interaction. Of course, weaknesses should be managed, and should not be allowed to debilitate, but there are times for working on weaknesses and times for getting a task done (say, discussing characterization in Bleak House, or whining about a mean professor).

I myself double in energy, emotion, and creativity when I interact face-to-face. That can be good or bad, and it's my responsibility to manage it. What happens to you at different levels of distance? How will you manage it? We as educators can seek to offer protective distant environments for students as well as stimulating close environments (and vice-versa).

Note on Craftmanship

2006-09-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

I believed in great books curricula before this experience, and still do.

Hope in Craftsmanship

2006-09-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

This is a response to Laterell's question on page six of her essay "Reexperiencing the Ordinary." It's a fun question to answer.

Let me tell you about my viola bow. I was a music major until this past May, when I graduated and switched departments, and my primary academic goal was to grow in musical ability. My first year at Tech I spent most of my time building a strong viola technique. My professor pushed me hard, and we gradually overcame deeply-rooted bad habits to build a strong basic technique. Continuing to reinforce the basic technique we had built, we approached a more advanced, equally vital, technique, the spiccato, which involves bouncing of the bow on the string, and must be executed with precision and often with great speed.

I practiced late into the night, fighting to stay awake so I could practice another hour. The work was a continuation of what we had been doing all year, making a habit of flexibility in my hands. We worked for weeks and weeks, and, even at my usually slow rate of progress, this was taking too long. I should be able to play a spiccato stroke by now! Both my professor and I began to get frustrated. He explained that if I did not learn the stroke I could not make an A in the course. I explained nothing, because I was trying as hard as I could and failing completely.

Professor Fielding demonstrated the technique again, this time using my equipment, because his was in the case. He found the demonstration difficult. He played a little more, and declared that my bow was not capable of a spiccato stroke.

A music student is always excited at the chance to upgrade his equipment (though the price can be intimidating), and I was at least as happy to need a new bow as to learn what the problem was. Professor Fielding made recommendations, and I went to George Robinson's violin shop and took out bows on approval, played them for him and others, and bought a nine-hundred dollar Coda bow. After a little work getting to know the new tool, I quickly mastered the spiccato stroke, saving my grade and my belief that I had musical talent (and probably redeeming me in the eyes of my professor, though he was not one to talk about subjective judgments).

Frustration and impossibility were separated from excitement and success by technology. The difference between the bows was not in fundamental structure, since that is nearly the same for all viola bows, but in the quality of each bow, born in the skill of the luthier to give expression to the possibilities inherent in the structure of the viola bow.

In your college life (future college student), you will not likely be a violist. I haven't met you, so I don't know. But you may find parallel situations. If you're working hard and failing, you may take a look around for another cause besides yourself. Or you may change your major, as I did.

Thus my apartment-mate and I grocery-shop separately, because I buy name brands. I am a much happier person than he is, or at least I am a better musician.

2006-08-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

!Hola!