An analysis of the Advanced Placement English Exam, 1977--1999: New criticism and reader-respons

Since its creation in the 1960s, the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition has historically been New Critical in nature. In the last 15 years reader-response has become accepted as an appropriate model for education in many Advanced Placement classrooms, but the AP Exam itself essentially has not changed. The purpose of this research was to describe and portray any incongruencies between the AP English Exam and transactional theory as explained by Rosenblatt. Three different features of the AP Exam were considered: the multiple-choice questions, the released and scored student essays, and the accompanying "Commentaries," "Scoring Guides," and "Comments" by the Chief Faculty Consultants.;A descriptive "Index of Indicators" was developed by modifying Purves' Elements of Writing about a Literary Work and was utilized to perform an ex post facto content analysis of AP English Exams from 1977 to 1999. A committee of four AP teachers familiar with Rosenblatt's transactional theory was formed to serve as "Raters." The purpose of these "Raters" was to verify the modifications of Purves' Elements for the "Index of Indicators" and to provide inter-rater reliability for the researcher's coding of multiple-choice questions, students' essays, and holistic evaluations of the published commentaries. Three percent of the multiple-choice questions were coded as reader-response and 97% were coded as New Critical, indicating that the multiple-choice sections on the AP Exam continue to be predominately New Critical in nature. Ten percent of students' statements in their essays were coded as reader-response, while 90% were coded as New Critical, pointing to their basically efferent orientation. The reports from the Chief Faculty Consultants imply a growing tendency to allow for divergent thinking and aesthetic responses, although the scoring of student essays does not suggest a similar acceptance. The combination of all three facets of the AP English Exam reveals both a trend toward acceptance of reader-response and a continuing incongruency with it.