Session Results: Purposes (Ed White)

INTERESTS: Whether even the best of all possible outcomes statements would do more harm than good or more good than harm.

Our table made a list of pluses and minuses, which seemed to balance out pretty well, though I still think the pluses have the better arguments. At the end of the table discussion, which was heated and very intelligent, we took a vote and split 4/4. I suspect that what we did would pretty well reflect the profession as a whole.

Minuses: To support the argument that even the best conceived outcomes statement will be damaging.

1. Since effective development of program goals must be site-based, with substantial participation and involvement by those in the program, and substantial faculty development, no "outsiders" can propose useful outcomes. Any such statement will be perceived as outside interference with the writing program and encounter major faculty resistance.

2. The very concept of outcomes is product-based and contradictory to a process-oriented writing program. It would be very difficult to include an understanding of the writing process or development of thinking processes as outcomes.

3. Outcomes statements, particularly national ones, tend to be fixed and rigid, difficult to revise as needed, easily reduced to superficial matters, and easily misused for program assessment. Reductionist trustees or legislators may misuse such a document to reduce funding or to make funding contingent on surface features of writing.

4. Outcomes statements, however carefully phrased, will have curricular implications and are likely to privilege one kind of curricular design and some kinds of assessments. It will be difficult to give writing programs space to experiment inside the constraints and very difficult to measure the transfer of writing program outcomes to other academic programs.

Pluses: To support the argument that a well-conceived outcomes statement will help the teaching and learning of writing at the college level.

1. A national and profession outcomes statement will help campus programs by making clear what can and ought to be expected of students completing first-year (or presumably other) composition courses. It will not dictate HOW to teach or WHAT to teach but rather what students should be able to do after the course of study. Such a document is a much needed professional statement of responsibilty.

2. A good outcomes statement will let teachers of second term composition or of writing intensive courses know what they should and what they should not expect of the students they are receiving.

3. While the outcomes statement will not dictate curriculum or pedagogy, it will give a baseline for student performance of various tasks at different levels and thus give the course much needed coherence. Any good statement will of course include appropriate process outcomes, as well as outcomes related to reading and thinking abilities.

4. A good statement will keep others from defining our course outcomes, as is now the case, and allow us to do so ourselves. The statement will be a strong defense against the reduction of composition to superficial matters that now prevail outside of the writing program.

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