In the article "Process Pedagogy and Its Legacy" in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, Chris Anson offers a comparison between pre-process and process pedagogy (216). He points to the change of focus from product to process, from text to learner, from teacher-centered to student-centered, and from individual effort to social dynamics. This change of focus from product to process necessarily puts the student and his development at the center of the classroom because it shifts the focus from what the student produces to how the student produces. This requires the instructor to put more attention on the student; how does the student think?; what interests the student?; what motivates the student?; what informs the student?
In a sense, this moves the academic setting in a direction of improving the basic writer as opposed to merely fostering the advanced writer. If an institution only focuses on honing the product, it is assuming that the content is already of high quality. If, however, an institution focuses on improving the writer, both the content and the product will improve as well as the student.
Concerning assessment, the two points that Yancey brings up about reliability and validity in assessment plans seems so obvious that one might forget about them. Validity means you measure what you intend to measure and reliability means you can do so consistently. If either of these measures are not present within a plan, you can neither be confident that what you measured is answering the questions you are asking nor that you have taken your measurements adequately.
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