Abstract

When writing instructors evaluate student papers, they do so in ways that reinforce the dispositions they ascribe to successful student writers. This was the primary finding of a study in which five college instructors were asked to provide written comments and concurrent verbal protocols as they graded two student papers. The results show that the instructors encountered at least four different personae or “visions” of student writers (immediate, ideal, parodic, and intrusive) while assessing the papers, which the instructors negotiated in order to imagine that they were working with serious learners. This pattern complicates understandings of the evaluation process, suggesting that the dynamics of teaching and learning influence assessment in unexpected ways.