The research reported investigated how 32 undergraduate students in an upper-level sociology course wrote critiques and how their texts were evaluated by 4 professors in the discipline. Students represented different majors and education levels. Features associated with critique were tested for their relationship to the professors' summed holistic quality scores. Student's status as major and their educational level were also tested for their relationship to the summed scores. Results indicate that (a) students were more likely to receive higher scores if they found weaknesses in the source article, basing their judgments on disciplinary knowledge and employing an integrated text configuration, and (b) neither major nor educational level was a strong predictor of quality. Findings suggest that current pedagogy that promotes personal evaluation of texts may not lead to the type of writing valued in particular disciplinary communities, where evaluative commentary may be more linked to unique disciplinary standards.
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