Abstract

Despite the shift from objectively based, empiricist methods of teaching and evaluating writing to ones more contextually situated, rhetorically defined, and process oriented, the changing emphasis from product to process typically has not been connected to classroom evaluations of writing. The purpose of my project is threefold: to articulate the potential impact models of composing can have on postsecondary classroom-level writing assessment, to advance a model of evaluation based upon contemporary theories of writing, and to validate the links between composition instruction and the assessment of student writers' development and growth. ;I begin the study by noting the complexity of measuring students' performance and defining the concept of writing quality. Through a brief historical survey, I argue that the evaluation of writing is complicated by the lack of consensus regarding what should be measured. The criteria behind writing assessments are not purely personal, but they can and inevitably are culturally and ideologically bound. ;After analyzing holistic, analytic, primary trait, performance-based, and portfolio systems, I demonstrate that pedagogies based on expressive, cognitive, and social theories of rhetoric imply methods of conducting evaluation. Composition teachers, though, continue to play authoritarian roles as guardians of grammatical and rhetorical propriety and judges of finished student papers. ;I argue that evaluation is best undertaken as an inescapable and continuous act of intervention in the composing process. From this stance, I present a model of evaluation incorporating the teacher, student, and students' peers as agents of evaluation. Examining four levels of evaluation throughout the composing process , I question the extent to which student qualities and achievements, evident in their texts and composing processes, are actively valued and rewarded; what is professed may not be truly perceived, valued, and striven for by those who make their way within classrooms. ;Finally, I explore an ethics of evaluation developed from moral philosophy. Because the knowledge that results from an evaluation is neither objective nor subjective but interpretive, I conclude that a participatory form of evaluation involving reflection and choice is a necessary condition for the postsecondary composition classroom