Making Grades

Abstract

THE focus of this paper is on the role that culture plays in shaping the way examiners arrive at assessments of candidates' relative academic ability in tertiary entrance examinations. In attempting to understand this process, I call on notions of ‘Discourse’, especially of the kind developed by Gee (1991, 1992, 1994). When examiners ‘make grades’, they call on culturally specific understandings of what counts as a ‘literate essay’, a ‘relevant’ argument, and an appropriate relationship between candidate and examiner. I start with a discussion of tertiary entrance examinations, move to a discussion of Discourse and conclude with an analysis of one set of examiners' reports. Examiners use underlying discourse structure as the basis on which they make their judgements about academic merit, and that these judgements are culturally situated and do, therefore, realise cultural values. However, although they are clearly culturally situated, they gain their legitimacy in the public arena by an appeal to the universality of standards of academic merit.