Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

THE OUTCOMES BOOK

Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2005 Utah State University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-604-2

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................................................xiiiIntroduction: Celebrating and Complicating the Outcomes Statement Susanmarie Harrington..........................................................................xv1 The Origins of the Outcomes Statement Edward M. White..........................................................................................................32 The Outcomes Project: The Insiders' History Keith Rhodes, Irvin Peckham, Linda S. Bergmann, and William Condon.................................................83 Standards, Outcomes and All That Jazz Kathleen Blake Yancey....................................................................................................184 Outcomes are not Mandates for Standardization Mark Wiley.......................................................................................................245 Expanding Our Understanding of Composing Outcomes Cynthia L. Selfe and Patricia Freitag Ericsson...............................................................326 The WPA Outcomes Statement Goes to High School Stephen Wilhoit.................................................................................................397 The Outcomes Statement at a Community College: Verification, Accreditation, and Articulation J. L. McClure.....................................................518 Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A View from the Field Linda Adler-Kassner and Heidi Estrem............................................................609 More Than the Latest PC Buzzword for Modes: What Genre Theory Means to Composition Barbara Little Liu..........................................................7210 Processes and Outcomes in Arizona's Higher Education System Duane Roen and Gregory R. Glau....................................................................8511 Knowledge of Conventions and the Logic of Error Donald Wolff..................................................................................................9712 Celebrating through Interrogation: Considering the Outcomes Statement through Theoretical Lenses Patricia Freitag Ericsson....................................10413 What the Outcomes Statement Could Mean for Writing across the Curriculum Martha A. Townsend...................................................................12114 First-Year Outcomes and Upper-Level Writing Susanmarie Harrington.............................................................................................12715 Using the Outcomes Statement for Technical Communication Barry M. Maid........................................................................................13916 Using Writing Outcomes to Enhance Teaching and Learning: Alverno College's Experience Robert O'Brien Hokanson.................................................15017 What the Outcomes Statement Is Not: A Reading of the Boyer Commission Report Rita Malenczyk...................................................................16218 The Outcomes Statement as Theorizing Potential: Through a Looking Glass Ruth Overman Fischer..................................................................17119 A Friendly Challenge to Push the Outcomes Statement Further Peter Elbow.......................................................................................17720 Outcomes and the Developing Learner Richard H. Haswell........................................................................................................19121 Practice: The Road to the Outcomes over Time Marilyn S. Sternglass............................................................................................201Afterword: Bowling Together: Developing, Distributing, and Using the WPA Outcomes Statement-and Making Cultural Change Kathleen Blake Yancey.....................211Notes.............................................................................................................................................................222References........................................................................................................................................................226Contributors......................................................................................................................................................234Index.............................................................................................................................................................238

Chapter One

THE ORIGINS OF THE OUTCOMES STATEMENT

Edward M. White

The question I posted to the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) listserv in 1996 was based on a series of frustrating experiences as a consultant to college and university writing programs. Typically, I would be asked to advise the program faculty on an assessment device that would place students in the appropriate course for them, the one in which they were most likely to be challenged and succeed.

"Sure," I would reply, sitting down at a conference table with the teaching faculty. "Tell me what is being taught in your courses." This would be met with an embarrassed silence. Most of the time nobody really knew what was taught in the various sections of the various writing courses listed in the college catalogue-that is, in any course besides the one a particular teacher was teaching, with the door to the classroom shut. So I would turn to the faculty member on my left and ask what that person expected students to be able to do at the end of the class.

"Do?" I would hear echoed back with perplexity. "I teach sentence structure [or grammar or paragraph structure or the reading of poetry or journal writing or James Joyce's Ulysses or a dozen other curricular ideas]. I suppose students should know ..." and the sentence would tail off into a series of indefinite abstractions. Like most other college faculty, the person on my left had focused on what the teacher did and hardly at all on what the student results were supposed to be. I would then canvass the others. "Are those your goals as well?" Not at all, would come the reply. What the first teacher sought to accomplish in English 45, Basic Writing, the second teacher taught in English 101, College Composition, and the third teacher taught in English 306, Advanced Composition. By the time we had gone halfway around the table, it was clear to everyone that we could not begin to talk about assessment until the program had some kind of structure. As long as every teacher did whatever seemed personally appropriate, and as long as more advanced work went on in some of the "basic" courses than in some of the "advanced" ones, there was no point in trying to place students in the curriculum. The problem was not so much with the different approaches taken by different teachers-that could in fact be considered a strength-but with the differing goals and expectations they expressed.

But how was the writing program to gain the needed structure? Again typically, each teacher was more or less on his or her own, at best guided by a few generalizations about the kind of reading material and writing assignments to use in each course. It seemed somehow wrong to limit a teacher, however new to the profession, however untutored in rhetoric or composition studies, by stating just...