Storied-selves, assessment & social justice: Classroom practices for composing college identities in the age of accountability

摘要

This dissertation addresses teachers who resist literacy assessment---as well as those who lead resistant teachers---to argue that in rejecting assessment, educators miss opportunities to enact ideals and influence assessment culture. Theories of narrative identity inform classroom practices that I situate at the intersection of composition pedagogy, literacy assessment, and commitment to issues of educational access and social justice. I contend that: • assessments defined by teachers' educational philosophies best support learning; • successfully dismantling the accountability agenda requires advocacy ranging from sponsorship of individual reflection to (inter)national activism; • teachers can best support students by implementing practices intended to filter, resist, process, or generate identity narratives focused on educational potential instead of deficit. I propose five understandings that should inform literacy assessment development or analysis intended to reduce harmful consequences for students, and I outline classroom practices informed by these understandings: effective educators recognize that they teach whole persons-in-process, not just subject matter; people use stories to construct selves and assessment and reflection are both practices that potentially "story" student identity; ideas about literacy are neither neutral nor acontextual, but ideological and socially-constructed; we live in a culture where students have unequal access to power and social goods; we internalize others' stories.;I introduce a type of self-reflection that asks students to engage with material alongside another "voice"---included to reveal when ideological beliefs and/or internalized assessments intrude---in the form of a person, text, or theory. I then explore three such practices: 1) identity kit mapping, developed to uncover complexities of literate identity and underlying tensions; 2) a heuristic for stance taking, listening, and response, offered to gauge and filter new ideas; and 3) assessment apprenticeships, where students practice self-assessing with support. My conclusion revisits the question of whether we should take on assessment identities. I assert that when we assume such identities and teach practices for interpreting assessments and educational narratives, we invite students to claim authorship of their identities and their potential. I suggest some ways that the three practices might be "scaled up" to assessment work beyond the individual/classroom levels for which they were designed.