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Teaching PhilosophyWriting and Assessment PracticesI see assessment and writing as consubstantial, especially in learning environments, like the college classroom, where part of our purpose is to understand how and why we do what we do. My classrooms attempt to link in tangible ways the writing and assessment practices of students by making assessment a part of the writing in the course. This means we look carefully not only at how to assess each other's writing but why we are doing so (what are our immediate purposes?) and from what epistemologies and hermeneutical practices (what rhetorical and ideological dispositions help us make value?). My classes construct assessment rubrics every semester, reflect upon them, and use them in a variety of ways. In order to understand best how to write and critically engage with the world and its discourses, students must practice assessment, since it offers ways to be self-conscious of how we make and judge knowledge. Merging the practices of assessment with writing means that our essays and other written products become occasions to explore discourse conventions, reflect upon the structures that maintain these conventions, and (re)consider the ways we individually translate these things. It means that assessment itself is a discourse all practice, revise, and interrogate. Assessment provides an explicit accounting of epistemology and hermeneutics, and so these activities encourage students to take self-reflexive stances, ask hard questions about dispositions, ideology, the construction of value, and knowledge. Mostly, I make assessment a part of the writing process, so that students have chances to understand rhetoric/knowledge from different angles, from epistemic and hermeneutic view points, as well as from the roles of writer, assessor, and community member who has co-constructed the writing values and conventions in the class. Select another link to read more about my teaching:
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