39: The Five-Paragraph Theme Teaches "Beyond the Test," by Bruce Bowles, Jr.

Kyle Stedman (@kstedman) reads the bad idea "The Five-Paragraph Theme Teaches 'Beyond the Test'" by Bruce Bowles, Jr. It's a chapter from Bad Ideas about Writing, which was edited by Cheryl E. Ball (@s2ceball) and Drew M. Loewe (@drewloewe). Don't miss the joke: the author of the chapter is disagreeing with the bad idea stated in the chapter's title.

Keywords: assessment washback, curriculum, five-paragraph theme, interrater reliability, localized assessment, portfolio assessment, standardized testing, validity

Bruce Bowles Jr. is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of the University Writing Center at Texas A&M University-Central Texas. His research interests focus on how we evaluate and make judgments across multiple contexts, including writing assessment, writing center administration, and political and public discourse. His work has been published in Composition Studies; Journal of Response to Writing; enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture; WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship; and Intraspection: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Style. (2020 bio)

As always, the theme music is "Parade" by nctrnm, and both the book and podcast are licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. The full book was published by the West Virginia University Libraries and Digital Publishing Institute; find it online for free at https://textbooks.lib.wvu.edu/badideas.

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