Assessment of Faculty and Students at the Graduate Level

Evaluation of Faculty and Students at the Graduate Level

Rebecca Moore Howard

17 November 1999

Purposes of graduate students' evaluation of faculty:

Course development

Evaluation of faculty for promotion and tenure

Program assessment

Purposes of faculty evaluation of graduate students:

Provide information not necessarily transmitted in the normal functionings of a graduate course

Provide information specifically tied to students' progress toward qualifying exams and/or the dissertation

Program assessment

Issues for consideration:

Formative vs. summative focus

Self-assessment

Providing for response by the person being evaluated

The extent to which the person being evaluated sets the terms for evaluation

Designing a process that respects the agency of the person being evaluated

Helpful sources—a (partially) annotated bibliography:

Anson, Chris M. "Portfolios for Teachers: Writing Our Way to Reflective Practice." New Directions in Portfolio Assessment: Reflective Practice, Critical Theory, and Large-Scale Scoring. Ed. Laurel Black, et al. Portsmouth, NYH: Boynton/Cook, 1994. 185-200.

There's no one definition of good teaching. Instead, criteria must be responsive to institutional constraints and to the individual teacher.

Ause, Cheryl Evans, and Gerilee Nicastro. "Establishing Sound Portfolio Practice: Reflections on Faculty Development." Situating Portfolios: Four Perspectives. Ed. Kathleen Blake Yancey and Irwin Weiser. Logan: Utah State UP, 1997. 89-100.

Bauer, Dale M. "Indecent Proposals: Teachers in the Movies." College English 60.3 (March 1998): 301-17.

Teachers need to quit working to be loved and instead work to engage students in the "community in the classroom" (315).

Bizzell, Patricia. "What Can We Know, What Must We Do, What May We Hope: Writing Assessment." College English 49 (1987): 575-84.

Camp, Roberta. "The Politics of Methodology." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 97-104.

Elbow, Peter. "Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process." College English 45.4 (April 1983): 327-39.

Teaching involves both gatekeeping and facilitating. Every teacher tends toward one of these poles or other other. Both are necessary. Teachers shouldn't try to strike a balance between the two, but instead recognize the value of what they are already doing.

Elbow, Peter. "Making Better Use of Student Evaluations of Teachers." Evaluating Teachers of Writing. Ed. Christine Hult. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 97-107.

Elbow, Peter. "Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: A Utopian View." Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996. 83-100.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.

"Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise." It utilizes "hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination" (170).

Graff, Gerald, and Andrew Hoberek. "Hiding It from the Kids (With Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)." College English 62.2 (November 1999): 242-254.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Assumptions and Applications of Student Self-Assessment." Student Self-Assessment and Development in Writing. Ed. Jane Smith and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P. Forthcoming.

Instead of externally imposed ability grouping that speaks to putatively natural attributes of the student, self-assessment can "prompt a greater understanding of one’s texts and one’s self," as well as "explicitly prompt[ing] writers to consider themselves in dialogic relation to their peers and readers."

Jones, Jesse. "Evaluating College Teaching: An Overview." Evaluating Teachers of Writing. Ed. Christine Hult. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 30-46.

Miller, Susan. "The Death of the Teacher." Composition Forum 6.2 (Summer 1995): 42-52.

We must recognize our difference from our students. We must not pretend to empower them while teaching them values and systems guaranteed to keep them in their place. We must resist the teaching roles inherited from the institutionalization of literature and composition: the mother role in which the teacher replaces the family, inculcating a moral system; and the Foucaudian observer role, in which we evaluate.

Quandahl, Ellen. "'It's Essentially as Though this Were Killing Us:' Kenneth Burke on Mortification and Pedagogy." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 27.1 (Winter 1997): 5-22.

Spellmeyer, Kurt. "Testing as Surveillance." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 174-84.

Taylor, Marcy, and Jennifer L. Holberg. "'Tales of Neglect and Sadism': Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition." College Composition and Communication 50.4 (June 1999): 607-625.

White, Edward M. "Power and Agenda Setting in Writing Assessment." Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies and Practices. Ed. Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri. Modern Language Association, 1996. 9-24.

http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Papers/GradAsmt.html