With Thanks To and Permission from Dr. Yancey

Dr. Yancey was gracious enough to give me permission to post our e-mail interview here on the blog space, and I have created links from my blog to the digital portfolio websites. Thanks Dr. Yancey!

1. Who were your influences in the field of composition and rhetoric?

This is a great question. When I was in graduate school, it was during the 1970s and into the 80s, so I was an early student in composition and rhetoric. I remember reading Lloyd Bitzer’s article on the rhetorical situation, and even on that first reading, realized that his understanding of rhetoric, especially as it was located in exigence, could provide a critical framework for historical scholarship as well as for curriculum and pedagogy—and it has! Ed Corbett’s CCC article on the open hand and the closed fist in rhetoric was another defining text for me. Mickey Harris’ CCC text on first-draft and multiple-draft writers (and Mickey was on my dissertation committee) was another useful text for me; she drew from work conducted in the Purdue writing center, so we saw it develop in process, and that was helpful. And I liked the way it revised the idea that all writers have to revise. I loved the section of the Cowan and Cowan textbook (Writing) on invention: it was the best collection of pedagogical approaches to invention I’ve ever seen. The work of Judith and Geoffey Summerfield was also influential: they focused on the role of comparison as an inventional framework.

Your question has helped me see that I think more in terms of influential texts rather than in terms of influential people.

Does this make sense?

2. Do you have one piece of work you would consider seminal? That is, one work more than any other that articulates your pedagogy and that you believe has had the greatest impact in this field?

Another great question. I think I’d have to cite two pieces. One is my first edited collection on portfolios: Portfolios in the Writing Classroom, 1992. This edited collection included work from middle school through college, so it was read by a wide range of teachers, and at the end of the day, this book is about curriculum and pedagogy working together in way that fosters good assessment. A second piece that has been more influential at the postsecondary level is my CCCC Chair’s Address: “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” It’s also about pedagogy, but it takes an historical look at rhetoric and composition as a discipline as well, so it has a larger cast.

3. What do you feel (what would you like to feel) will be your legacy> within the field of composition theory?>

Oh gosh, a legacy. That’s funny. I used to tease Brian Huot when we were co-editing Assessing Writing that we and the journal would be a footnote in the history of assessment ;)
I suspect that if I have a legacy, it will end up being something to do with assessment or portfolios (both print and e), and/or something to do with my seeing a shift in composition that hadn’t been fully articulated before and then finding ways to support that shift.

4. In a 2005 interview with Richard Colby, you stated that you > didn't want to use electronic portfolios as an assessment tool "unless, by assessment,you mean a formative evaluation of work to enhance programs"(http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/yancey/yancey.htm), could you explain what you meant by "formative evaluation?"

Formative evaluation is the use of assessment to help students while they are in formation: to help them learn. So responding to writing is a kind of formative assessment. Make sense?

5. What is the current, generally accepted, paradigm for assessinge-portfolios? Do you agree with it?

I don’t think there is one yet. I think what currently happens is that people use the criteria of print to assess portfolios, and I think that’s too narrow a set of criteria. But this does depend on how you see the portfolio, and on how much agency the technology provides to students. I have a CCC article on some of this: if the students are working in a scripted online system, they won’t be able to exercise much agency, and the old criteria will suffice. But my view of digital portfolios conceptualizes them as a composition requiring a new set of criteria—including connections; design; and context. Make sense?

6. Finally, could you point me toward some good examples of electronicportfolios (there's so much to choose from out on the web, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed)?

I think we have that covered, but if you want more, let me know?