Reciprocal authorities in communal writing assessment: Constructing textual value within a “New politics of inquiry”

Abstract Drawing on established methods of interpretive research in composition, this article provides a two-level analysis of the portfolio program at a large, urban, Midwestern university. At the first level, this study details the three major forms of evaluative authority in the program and the distinct types of expertise and knowledge on which each form of authority is based. Administrators' evaluative authority is based in institutional power and disciplinary knowledge; teachers' authority is based in their richly contextualized pedagogical knowledge; and judgments by outside instructors are validated based on their status as informed but “distanced” evaluators. At the second level of analysis, the article documents and theorizes the rhetorical and political dynamics by which the three forms of authority interact. Presenting transcriptions of key verbal exchanges and participants' later reflections on those exchanges, the author explores and maps the contested borders of authority among outside instructors, teachers, and administrators. Because this exploration and mapping provides a glimpse of a portfolio program in transition from a psychometric to a hermeneutic model of textual politics in writing assessment, what emerges is a portrait of the future of communal writing assessment.

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