Bad Papers Don't Make Failures, Assessments Do

Theorizing Failure in US Writing Assessments by Asao B. Inoue

I want to begin by saying that I understand the premise upon which Inoue builds her argument. Assessments produce failure by labeling certain characteristics or qualities of writing as bad, and enough bad characteristics or qualities in a piece means the piece is bad and the writer has failed.

I also follow her rundown of the different ways failure is assessed through the cognitivist, sociocultural, and macrostructural perspectives. Cognitivists see writers as individuals unto themselves whose failures are a result of personal learning behaviors. Socioculturalists suggest that writing is raced, gendered, classed, and cultured such that a piece designated a failure is merely a result of dissonance between the home literacy of the writer and the expectation of the dominant culture. Macrostructuralists argue that historical events, laws, and legal decisions produce the conditions of failure.

Lastly, I understand her explanation of the psychological effects of Performance-Approach and Performance-Avoidance wherein a distinction is made between students whose behaviors are geared toward succeeding (Approach) and students whose behaviors are geared toward avoiding failure (Avoidance). According to Inoue, assessments produce the possibility of failure and failure has consequences beyond the academic setting, therefore students become more concerned with avoiding failure (and thus the consequences) than with fostering positive behaviors that better writing.

The idea that I struggle with is one that comes along with the notion that assessments produce failure; that is, if there are no assessments, no one will have failed. If we are to believe that such a thing as good writing exists, and it is our duty to help students write well, we must also acknowledge the reality that bad writing exists in the first place. Is writing bad not failing in the first place, regardless of whether or not we assess it as such? At what point do "room for improvement" and "failure" become distinct responses to a writing submission? Is "misogonist" only a failure to spell "misogynist" at the moment of assessment?

I understand the initial response to these questions is that the designation of "failure" does not exist until an assessment has determined such and such writing to have failed, whereas individual instances of failure are not the same as the designation "failure". That is to say, an academic institution labeling someone a "failure" has external consequences whereas individual instances of failure on a writing do not. Is it the designation of "failure" that we are trying to replace with a state of constant "room for improvement" until a student is finally writing well?

I will yield that the designation of failure does become problematic within the sociocultural and macrostructural perspectives, and that perhaps my resistance comes from my tendency toward the cognitivist perspective. A student speaking in his or her home literacy may be perceived as failing in communicating an idea for no other reason than the judge of the writing not sharing that literacy. This has nothing to do with the soundness of the argument, the depth of insight, the academic scholarship, etc., but only in the way such things are being communicated. This leads into the inherent fallibility of the judge (teacher, proctor, etc.) and a questioning of his or her authority to adequately asses writing.