(adapted from Working in the Writing Center by John Edlund)
Barbara Walvoord and Lucille McCarthy, in collecting the data for the naturalistic studies presented in Thinking and Writing in College, found that college instructors in many different disciplines tend to ask what they call “good/better/best” questions. These questions go beyond the “review” types of assignments common in high school classrooms. High school assignments are generally graded on the accuracy of the student’s recitation of newly learned material, while typical college assignments ask students to “apply discipline-based categories, concepts, or methods to new data and new situations” (7).
Typical good/better/best assignments take the following forms:
Good: Is X good or bad?
Better: Which is better—X or Y?
Best: Which is the best among available options?
What is the best solution to a given problem?
Walvoord and McCarthy define five tasks that are typical of good/better/best reasoning:
Task 1: Define “good” so as to accommodate a number of variously weighted actors and address the issue of “good for whom?”
Task 2: Observe and analyze causes of the problem, aspects of the situation, and/or alternative solutions to the problem.
Task 3: Bring that information into disciplined relationship with the definition of “good” so a single judgment can be made.
Task 4: Integrate values/feelings with reasoning so as to reach a defensible position.
Task 5: During the process, conduct simultaneously the processes [of] “solution searching” and “rationale-building.”
For Task 5, Walvoord and McCarthy are drawing on problem solving research that shows that subjects simultaneously look for different solutions to a problem as well as justifications for the particular solution they want to defend.
Good/Better/Best
questions are more common in some disciplines, Business and Engineering, for
example, than in others.