Here, I’ll focus on Arnetha Ball’s “Expanding the Dialogue” and Haswell’s “Gender Bias.” But, first I’ll mention that this discussion leads me to an article we read for our pedagogy bootcamp: Wendy Bishop’s “Teaching Grammar for Writers in a Process Classroom.” To demonstrate my own process in dealing with questions of diversity, I’ll reprint part of my initial response to that article here:
Let me get this out of the way first: I swear by Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. I will argue the merits of the Oxford comma with anyone who will listen, and I take grammar and style seriously… I just don’t see any evidence in Bishop’s discussion that the sorts of grammar and style elements that work in “Grammar B” writing aren’t also the same elements that work in “Grammar A” writing. I’m not a philistine, but there’s got to be a standard (stop me if I get preachy). We are here to help students think critically and find their voices, but couldn’t one argue that that’s exactly what they’re doing in a public speaking class next door in Diffenbaugh? What’s the difference here? We’re writing. We’re composing. (Read the full response here.)
I sound like a philistine, right? My opinions on grammar and style have changed dramatically now that I’ve actually spent two semesters in the classroom. These things which once seemed so important to me now take a backseat to composition as self-discovery. Arnetha Ball discusses the importance of diversity not only on the part of students, but also on assessors and teachers, writing that, “It is time to include the voices of teachers from diverse backgrounds in discussions concerning writing assessment,” and that through their presence, these voices “can not only inform, but re-shape current assessment practices” (380). Same goes for Haswell and Haswell, who assert that, “Assessors, teachers, and students must question their own assumptions and practices, read with a new awareness, talk with each other, and be open to a situation that is too complex to accommodate universal claims” (429-29).
And these “universal claims” are what I think is at the heart of this discussion. Today’s writing classroom and today’s writers are diverse and—to go back again to Wardle and Roozen—they bring in their own ecological experiences when entering our classrooms or submitting to a writing test. We must not assess them on some rigid, right vs. wrong criteria, but instead must find ways to allow for a multitude of voices operating in their own contexts.
Writing Assessment and Technology 