Publisher's Synopsis
To establish the issues that must be con-sidered by evaluators of college writing programs, Witte and Faigley review major evaluation studies conducted at the Uni-versity of Northern Iowa, the University of California San Diego, Miami Univer-sity, and the University of Texas.
For each study the authors devise a series of questions that probe every as-pect of theory, pedagogy, and research: What do we presently know? What as-sumptions are we making and how do those assumptions limit our knowledge? Are those limitations necessary or de-sirable? What do we still need to know?
Such questions demand much of pro-gram evaluators, who also must face additional difficult questions as they evalu-ate a writing program. Do the instructors conducting the writing classes share common assumptions that are reflected in their assignments, evaluative pro-cedures, teaching procedures, and course content? How stable will the program prove to be over time? Will the writing program have a lasting effect? Do stu-dents leave the program with increased confidence in their ability to write?
As Witte and Faigley urge program evaluators to pose these questions, they also bring to the problem a new compre-hensive conceptual framework that both necessitates such queries and provides an opportunity to answer them.
