Chapter 4. Directed Self-Placement at "Democracy's Open Door": Writing Placement and Social Justice in Community Colleges

Localizing Directed Self-Placement: UX Stories and Methods

“…DSP can also address the aims of social justice by considering intersectionality; for example, by disaggregating their data not just by race but also by other demographic factors, such as disability and Pell Grant recipients, Klausman and Lynch (2022) demonstrate how DSP can potentially disrupt not just systemic racism but also ableism and classism. Toth (2018) usefully summarizes these and other efforts as "validation for social justice" (p. 145), suggesting that DSP could be well-suited for strengthening placement equity as long as there are validation efforts at the local level. There has been increasing interest in DSP for two-year colleges (Gilman et al, 2019;Klausman et al, 2016;Toth, 2018Toth, , 2019, which tend to serve more diverse student populations than their four-year university counterparts and are vital pathways to higher education.…”

“…Toth (2018) usefully summarizes these and other efforts as "validation for social justice" (p. 145), suggesting that DSP could be well-suited for strengthening placement equity as long as there are validation efforts at the local level. There has been increasing interest in DSP for two-year colleges (Gilman et al, 2019;Klausman et al, 2016;Toth, 2018Toth, , 2019, which tend to serve more diverse student populations than their four-year university counterparts and are vital pathways to higher education. When analyzing DSP's potential to serve community college populations, Toth (2018) writes, "DSP's ability to achieve that promise [of social justice] is contingent on processes designed with a critical awareness of ideologies that reproduce social inequalities .…”

Supporting Student Linguistic Identity and Autonomy in Directed Self Placement Through Linguistic Domains Using Qualtrics Scoring

“…Toth and Aull (2014) noted that self-placement models exist in various forms, including self-placement checklists, extensive open-ended reflective responses, group advising discussions around self-placement, and written responses to prompts with post-writing reflective questionnaires. Decades of research on self-placement has shown that self-placement leads to positive faculty-student relationships (Caouette, 2019) and that institutions believe that self-placement leads to more student agency (Royer & Gilles, 1998;Toth, 2018Toth, , 2019. Additionally, as Crusan (2011) pointed out, "DSP sends a powerful message to students because it affords them some agency and includes students' selfevaluations as an essential component in the placement decision" (p. 778).…”

Rethinking student placement to enhance efficiency and student agency

“…Crusan (2011) noted that DSP can be faster and cheaper, teachers appreciate the procedure, and placement decisions can be as appropriate or even more appropriate than with standardised testing (see also Crusan, 2006;Royer & Gilles, 1998). The Conference on College Composition and Communication's (2020) Statement on Second Language Writing and Multilingual Writers included a recommendation for directed self-placement or other methods of placement of second language learners that combine direct assessment with student choice, to privilege student agency and balance against inherent biases against certain student groups (Moos & Van Zanen, 2019;Toth, 2018;Wang, 2020).…”