Although language is a medium of learning, most educational institutions typically
teach and therefore evaluate language separately from content. In second language contexts,
recent attention has been given to language/content integration through content-based
language instruction. Yet, questions of integrative evaluation (evaluating language and
content as one) remain uncertain and difficult. This inquiry explores difficulties invoked
when teachers engage in practices of integrative evaluation of English language learners'
writing at an international college for Japanese nationals in Canada.
Are these difficulties technical problems? Technical rationality has been critiqued
by a number of thinkers. Those interested in action research practices, contrast technical
rationality with what they call reflective rationality and argue for contextualizing, rather than
simplifying, difficult situations. Some with hermeneutic interests argue for an attunement to,
rather than concealment of, difficulties of life in the classroom. Others interested in writing
instruction, are critical of conventional approaches to writing pedagogy as reductionistic
and deterministic.
There are a number of instances of difficulty in teachers' integrative evaluation
practices. Prior to agreeing on a prompt, many teachers explore texts as interpretive, social
literacy but, in their uncertainty of how to mark such a text, they return to a question for
which there is a 'correct' and 'controlled' response. Once the prompt and evaluative criteria
are established, discordant orientations to evaluation, literacy, and language/content
integration complicate teachers' uncertainty. For example, teachers sometimes acknowledge
functional views of language/content integration, yet they are vague and uncertain about how
to mark in an integrated way. When teachers read texts prior to judgment, they comment
that the texts are difficult to interpret and then impose their own 'straightforward' readings
on the texts to reduce and simplify the difficulties.
These instances raise serious concerns in practices of evaluation, literacy and
language/content integration, especially when technical forms of evaluation are paradoxically
aligned with social and integrated texts. A turn to hermeneutics troubles a technical hold and
invites further inquiry into tensioned moments of integrative evaluation as difficult, living
practices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10001 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Low, Marylin Grace |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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