The Flexible Pathways Model Of Writing Assessment: A Plan For Equity And Agency In The Writing Classroom

This project is a qualitative study in which I seek to understand how my new model of writing assessment, The Flexible Pathways Model, or FPM, functions when piloted in three First-Year Writing classrooms at a border and Hispanic-Serving Institution. This research builds on the work of composition scholars Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, Elbow and Jane Danielewicz, Asao B. Inoue, Ellen Carillo, and Edward White as well as education scholar Benjamin Bloom. The model also incorporates concepts from Universal Design scholarship of Tara Wood, Stephen Dolmage, and Anne-Marie Womack. In the FPM, students learn about four different methods of writing assessment and pedagogy. Each student then selects which method they would like the instructor to use to assess their work. Depending on the student's selection, their choice of assessment method also shapes how they will proceed through the curriculum as they may choose a model with hard or flexible deadlines, deferred grades, multiple versions of assignments, or move at their own pace. Individual interviews and a focus group with the instructors who used the FPM indicated the FPM has great flexibility, functioning as a framework in which teachers are free to be creative. The teachers also showed a strong willingness to collaborate with me and each other, showed significant concern for their students, and this concern for students seemed to be the root from which greater flexibility, increased student choice, and increased equity and agency grew in the classroom. The teachers thought that the FPM gave students more agency and helped to create a grading ecology of greater equity for virtually all students than more traditional one-size-fits-all approaches and can foster composing environments conducive to the success of an increasingly diverse student population in our writing classrooms.