Odell, Lee. “Context Specific Ways of Knowing and the Evaluation of Writing.” Writing, Teaching, and Learning in the Disciplines. Anne Herrington and Charles Moran, Eds. New York: MLA, 1992. 86-98.

one-sentence summary: Odell argues that WAC faculty must help their colleagues understand students’ ways of knowing and that writing and content should not be evaluated separately.

86: A formalist evaluation of students writing would lead to comments such as “simple, clear, and authoritative,” whereas; a non-formalist approach could lead to comments such as: “writes well…but they write about nothing.”

87: defines ways of knowing as “thinking strategies that can be made conscious and can influence a writer’s (or a reader’s) reflection on the subject matter at hand.”

88: meaning making as “deliberate,” “spontaneous,” and/or “context specific.” In this article he argues for context specific and deliberative and doesn’t address spontaneous much. However, his mention of spontaneous ways of knowing made me think back to last semester re: Masumi and affect…the affect is spontaneous before the mind categorizes and judges it.

89: need to do (and help others do) rhetorical analysis in order to make better evaluations

89: need to “give up facile generalizations about what constitutes ‘good’ writing’.”

90: need to “maintain balanced perspective” regarding different ways of knowing and others’ opinions on ways of knowing.

91: two WOK he mentions here are: noting similarities and identifying gaps.

91: faulty WOK are empty phrases and value judgements, such as: “it is interesting,” “it is amazing,” and “this is unfortunate…man must learn…”

96: while discussion engineering texts, he mentions two other ways of knowing: “explaining decisions,” and “providing a technical rationale.”

97: WAC specialists need to help others understand or overcome their objections to appreciating and evaluating students’ ways of knowing.

Top 5: In the article, he refers to Bazerman’s article in this same text on rhetorical analysis, as well as Miller and Selzer, but I’m working from a photocopy without a Works Cited so I can’t identify those texts right now.