Date of Award
Spring 2013
Abstract
In this project, I examine the legacy of behaviorism's dismissal of experience on contemporary writing assessment theory and practice within the field of composition studies. I use an archival study of John B. Watson's letters to Robert Mearns Yerkes to establish behaviorism's systematic denial of experience and its related constructs: mind, consciousness, thought, emotions, purpose, and meaning. I trace this denial through the efficiency movement's effects on education and educational measurement in the early 20th century and the establishment of the behaviorist infrastructure of assessment---an infrastructure that contributed; paradoxically, to the early focus in composition studies on experience. I analyze contemporary writing assessment's principles and practices for remnants of behaviorism's dismissal of experience. I conclude by proposing a new principle of principles for writing assessment based on the concept of experience.
Document Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Thomas Newkirk
Department or Program
English
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Recommended Citation
Wilson, Maja Joiwind, "Writing assessment's "debilitating inheritance": Behaviorism's dismissal of experience" (2013). Doctoral Dissertations. 708.
https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/708