Eng. 5020

Dr. Zamora

Writing Theory & Practice 

Blog 7

                                                   Who is the authority ? 

What is your definition of different?  Adults Bi, Butch, and Bar Dyke in the twentieth century have been telling their stories for years. One's mind set determines how " complicate the notion that identities can be performed in clean, organized, distinct ways by examining the theorizing our own experiences of class, gender, and sexual identity performance " when the stories are read. I think that all people from all walks of life have the same struggles with their identity personally and professionally. All educators have a degree of expectation of building relationships with their students. Some Bi, Butch, and Bar Dyke cannot be in the closet because of some accumulative stereotypical learned aspects some students bring to class. I personally agree with Bill Clinton when he suggested to the military personnel  "Don't ask don't tell" to avoid complications. I also agree with Michelle Gibson, Martha Marinara, and Deborah Meem when they wrote" The space created by opening up identity allows for a more open-ended model of collective identity and poses hard questions about the nature and definitions of political subject positions as one is both enlarged and oppressed by constantly shifting alliances" maintain the students engagement in the classroom and unwarranted questions in  their political environment. 

                                                Testing for entry?

Like with most processes  change comes with progress.  I agree with Yancy as she explains" A related approach constructs the history of writing assessment as the struggle between and among scholars and testing practitioners and faculty, those who speak the terms validity and reliability quite differently: the old expert; the new non expert, from this perspective, the last 50 years of writing assessment can be narrativized as the teacher-layperson ( often successfully) challenging the (psychometric ) expert, developing and then applying  both expertise and theory located not in psychometrics, but in rhetoric, in reading  and hermeneutics, and, increasingly, in writing practice " is part of our accumulative  process of writing assessment. We are now faced with a standing concern of " what (else) might we learn from writing assessment? And how would we learn? Underlying these concerns is a particular construct of writing assessment itself:" as we focus on identifying future placement processes. There are many concerns to factor when considering any aspects of educational processes.  Which might take us back to the first wave " What is the best or most valid measure of writing?"-but a tied to theory, to institutional need, to cost, and ultimately to efficiency [ Williamson)-"Which measure can do the best ad fairest job of prediction with the least amount of work and the lowest cost?" as testing is constantly being considered. 

Writing  should not be assessed by a timed test only. Students  accumulative writing exercises in the last class should also be considered. I agree with Yancy as she shares " we knows that for a valid test of writing performance, multiple writing sample written on different occasions and in various rhetorical modes are preferable to single samples drawn from an isolated writing instance" considering a more accurate assessment.