College Composition and Communication Feb 2025

Constructivist Writing Placement: Repositioning Agency for More Equitable Placement through Collaborative Writing Placement Practices

Jennifer Burke Reifman ; Stacy Wittstock ; Tricia Serviss ; Beth Pearsall ; Dan Melzer

Abstract

This article presents a constructivist writing placement framework, developed from the study of two pilot iterations of a local writing placement mechanism at a large public research university. Through preliminary analysis of data from these pilots, we present a model of constructivist writing placement and demonstrate how it helps move conceptualizations of student agency as primarily housed within student exercise of choice toward more robust understandings and facilitation of student agency via placement. Extending recent calls to reconsider methodological traditions like directed self-placement to more explicitly account for educational equity issues, our two pilot assessments illustrate how we might reposition student agency within writing placement as emergent from situational interactions with faculty and the institutions they represent, rather than merely authorized by them.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2025-02-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc2025763423
Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing program administration multimodality race and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Allen (2018)
    Composition Is the Ethical Negotiation of Fantastical Selves
    College Composition and Communication
  2. Cooper (2011)
    Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted
    College Composition and Communication
  3. Yancey (1999)
    Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment
    College Composition and Communication
  4. Royer et al. (1998)
    Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation
    College Composition and Communication
  5. Huot (1996)
    Toward a New Theory of Writing Assessment
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 23 works outside this index ↓
  1. Aull (2021)
    Directed Self-Placement: Subconstructs and Group Differences at a US University
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  2. Brown (1991)
    Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Le…
    Organization Science  ↗
  3. Burke Reifman (2024)
    Reading the Reader through Raciolinguistic Ideologies: An Investigation of the Evidence S…
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  4. Connors (1997)
    Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy
     ↗
  5. Crowley (1998)
    Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays
     ↗
  6. Crusan (2011)
    The Promise of Directed Self-Placement for Second Language Writers
    TESOL Quarterly  ↗
  7. Gere (2010)
    Assessing the Validity of Directed Self-Placement at a Large University
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  8. Gross (2024)
    Construct Validity and the Demise of the Analytical Writing Placement Examination (AWPE) …
    Journal of Writing Assessment  ↗
  9. Hirsch (2024)
    Collaborative Writing Placement: Partnering with Students in the Placement Process
    Journal of Writing Assessment  ↗
  10. Horton (2022)
    Two Sisters and a Heuristic for Listening to Multilingual, International Students’ Direct…
    Journal of Writing Assessment  ↗
  11. Inoue (2015)
    Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Ju…
     ↗
  12. Lave (1991)
    Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
     ↗
  13. Lewiecki-Wilson (2000)
    Rhetoric and the Writer’s Profile: Problematizing Directed Self-Placement
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  14. Luna (2003)
    A Voice in the Decision: Self-Evaluation in the Freshman English Placement Process
    Reading & Writing Quarterly  ↗
  15. Moos (2019)
    Directed Self-Placement as a Tool to Foreground Student Agency
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  16. Schendel (1999)
    Exploring the Theories and Consequences of Self-Assessment through Ethical Inquiry
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  17. Soliday (2002)
    The Politics of Remediation: Institutional and Student Needs in Higher Education
     ↗
  18. Stanley (2010)
    The Rhetoric of Remediation: Negotiating Entitlement and Access to Higher Education
     ↗
  19. Swales (2000)
    Languages for Specific Purposes
    Annual Review of Applied Linguistics  ↗
  20. Tinkle (2022)
    (In)Equities in Directed Self-Placement
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  21. Toth (2018)
    Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity
     ↗
  22. Toth (2014)
    Directed Self-Placement Questionnaire Design: Practices, Problems, Possibilities
    Assessing Writing  ↗
  23. Wittstock (2022)
    Gatekeeping by Design: The Use of an Exit Exam as a ‘Boss Text’ in a Basic Writing Course
    Journal of Basic Writing  ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. College Composition and Communication Jun 2024
    Black Linguistic Justice from Theory to Practice ↗
    Hannah Franz; Michelle Petty Grue; Angela Rowell; Marie Tano; Sierra J. Johnson; Anne Charity Hudley
    writing pedagogy writing program administration multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  2. Teaching English in the Two-Year College Mar 2013
    Toward a Definition of a Writing Program at a Two-Year College: You Say You Want a Revolution? ↗
    Jeffrey Klausman
    writing program administration two-year college multimodality race and writing
  3. College Composition and Communication Sep 2009
    Creating a Culture of Assessment in Writing Programs and Beyond ↗
    Cindy Moore; Peggy O’Neill; Brian Huot
    writing program administration assessment multimodality race and writing
  4. Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026
    Literacy Sponsorship, GenAI, and the Entangled Economies of Experiential Learning ↗
    Girdharry, Kristi
    service learning literacy studies multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  5. Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jan 2026
    Trafficking Rhetoric: Race, Migration, and the Making of Modern-Day Slavery ↗
    Leslie J. Harris
    multimodality race and writing