Intersections of Genre and Assessment: Systems, Uptakes, and Ideologies

Abstract

Intersections of Genre and Assessment: Systems, Uptakes, and Ideologies seeks to discover and examine the intersections between rhetorical genre studies and writing assessment. Rhetorical genre studies (RGS) and writing assessment have separately provided means for influencing and understanding the teaching of writing in first-year English classrooms. Likewise, scholars in RGS and researchers in writing assessment have made significant contributions suggesting ways of examining the values and beliefs that exist within any system. This dissertation encourages Rhetoric & Composition to explicitly consider how RGS can be a framework for analyzing writing assessment and combines RGS concepts with writing assessment practices to further illuminate the writing classroom, moving towards an understanding of the complex systems that make up writing assessment and instruction. This research study does so by focusing on different genre systems of assessment, the complex web that exists—the interactions occurring between genres—and the uptakes and ideologies that arise within those systems. Additionally, this work expands opportunities for future research and teaching by encouraging scholars to examine the assessment systems they use in their local writing classrooms, and the effects those systems have on participants, both teacher and student. This dissertation sheds light on the momentous nature of assessment systems, for example, the ways in which students take up and remember teacher response to student writing, and how assessment acts and is acted upon. To fully understand the intersection(s) between RGS and writing assessment, I will draw on survey data and interviews that will reveal how students take up, remember, and interpret teacher response genres (e.g. marginal comments) and other genres (e.g. assignment prompts) working in the classroom-based assessment system. I conclude by paying special attention to ideologies embedded in assessment systems and genres, and how ideologies shape actions and participants.