cover image: Assessment in a Social Context: Grading as an Interpretive Community.

Assessment in a Social Context: Grading as an Interpretive Community.

Three teachers of first-year composition used cross-grading as a way of extending the student's grasp of interpretive communities as arbiters of value as well as creators of meaning. Students in six sections (two experimental groups) approached the English 101 Common Final in the same manner, discussing a published article and sharing their preliminary writing before completing a final draft during the examination period. In a practice run, students in Group B observed the three teachers sharing freewritten responses to a published article as a preliminary to composing a polished essay. Both groups saw the teachers' freewrites and polished essays, but only Group B witnessed the verbal negotiations of this "interpretive community." Results showed that: (1) students in Group B did not write better essays on the Common Final than those in Group A; (2) students in Group B may have developed a better understanding of reading and interpretative communities; (3) teachers probably graded student essays more fairly and consistently as a result of having constituted themselves as an interpretive community in front of classes, reaching a rough consistency in grading about 90% of the time; and (4) students in Group B, as evidenced both in their journals and in their quantitative course evaluations, felt better about grading procedures than those in Group A. Evaluation can be demystified when cross-grading partners define themselves as an interpretive community. Cross-graders can demonstrate their reading strategies and acknowledge their critical biases, thus entering into a dialogue that enriches both students and teachers. (SR)

Authors

Gould, Christopher

Peer Reviewed
F
Publication Type
['Reports - Research', 'Opinion Papers', 'Speeches/Meeting Papers']
Published in
United States of America

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