Directed Self-Placement Principles and Practices

Research & Teaching in Developmental Education, Fall 2003 by Greene, Nicole Pepinster

Directed Self-Placement Principles and Practices Royer, D.J. and Gilles, R. (Eds.) (2003). Directed self-placement principles and practices. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

If you are considering directed self-placement (DSP) as a method of student assessment and placement in first-year English classes, then this is the book that you should read. Edited by Daniel J. Royer and Roger Gilles, the originators of DSP, this volume is a collection of essays describing the process of adopting DSP, beginning with the editors' very informative introduction entitled "FAQ." all the contributors, with the exception of the authors of the last chapter, consider DSP as the assessment method of choice, and all the contributors who favor DSP, with one exception, have adopted DSP in their institutions.

Some of the contributors and their writing programs are nationally known, for example: Peter Elbow, University of Massachusetts; Erica J. Reynolds, University of Arizona; and David Blakesley, Purdue University. But many of the contributors come from a wide range of colleges and universities, so you may find one institution that fits your institutional and student profile. Although the book is divided into two sections, "Principles and Practices," all the articles deal with practice. They discuss why and how English departments changed their placement methods, and they describe the outcomes and evaluations of DSP by students, faculty, and administrators. Many of the articles include excellent tables and graphs, as well as full examples of the questionnaires and materials administrators of DSP distributed to students, most of them, of course, modeled on the Royer and Gilles original.

The collection begins with Elbow's essay, sub-titled, "Shifting the Crunch from Entrance to Exit," which situates DSP within the historical context of assessment. he reminds us that there at two "crunches," two points of assessment, one at the beginning (placement) and one at the end (exit exams). The problem with placement, states Elbow, is that it "can foster exactly those factors that undermine success in learning" (p. 21). DSP shifts "the crunch" from entrance to exit, but Elbow reminds us that if we use this model, we need to believe in our students and stick by them to the end.

Many problems have motivated faculty to adopt DSP: dissatisfaction with traditional methods of assessment and placement (ACT/SAT scores timed essay), their suspect reliability and validity, the resistance amongst faculty to identifying and labeling so many students as "basic," and the desire to give students agency and create a "democratic community" (Royer & Gilles, p. 61). "Composition studies" states David Blakesley "has underestimated the ethical and moral complexity of writing placement" (p. 32).

Blakesley, along with several other writers, explains the philosophical and practical problems that result from choosing DSP, pointing out the institution's desire for hegemony and describing placement as "an expression of power and a symptom of the institution's normalizing desire" (p. 34). Moving from the political to the practical, Blakesley also explains that the institution's resistance to DSP can be accounted for by "the number of people needed to make it work" (p. 37). We should be warned that this is "a high maintenance change" (p. 39). Writing from her experience at open admissions Kutztown University, Janice Chernekoff also stresses how many levels of the university are involved in DSP, and she advises "any school considering DSP discuss payment up front and be careful to compile a realistic estimate of the time needed for work" (p. 145). These articles also make it clear that DSP raises site-specific problems which can only be solved on an individual basis.

All the authors discuss the positive results of their move to DSP. Cynthia E. Cornell and Robert D. Newton of DePauw University have detailed analyses of their students' achievements and satisfaction, according to race, gender, and social group. They state that they would have ended DSP if they could have shown that their students had been "disadvantaged" by their choices. In her essay on DSP and self-efficacy, Erica J. Reynolds states that DSP works because of the accurate descriptions of courses, the students' knowledge of their own abilities, and their wanting "to do what is best for them." The empowerment of DSP allows students to do that. As several articles note, the fears of more skeptical faculty that their regular first-year English classes would be flooded with "basic writers" never materialized. Chernekoff points out that their "evidence of success" was realized when there were relatively few changes in the population of the first-year English classes; furthermore, the students were happy and the faculty were not objecting.

The only author not adopting DSP (because his study of 65 community college students did not conclusively show that it warranted the necessary financial expenditure) also stresses how the "DSP pilot project was in some ways central to the revision of our policies and instructional methods" (p. 203). Certainly this is a theme echoed in many of the articles, that regardless of the outcome, the discussion of DSP has advanced the conversation regarding assessment and placement and their relation to the first-year writing curriculum; and once again, it has also made us think more carefully about how we view our students.