Restoring Possibility: 7 Assessment and Authority

The false choice between system and instance has real-world consequences. Once the ladder logic is in place, assessment and authority are reshaped, often imperceptibly, but powerfully. What had been relational and interpretive is now procedural and hierarchical.

1. Assessment becomes alignment

In a Hallidayan frame:

• Evaluation is interpretive, grounded in relational context.

• Success is judged in terms of meaning enacted, not conformity to a blueprint.

• Variation and innovation are semiotic signals, not errors.

Once the ladder takes over:

• Assessment is mechanical, focused on compliance with staged expectations.

• Instances are measured against the teleologised genre.

• Difference is problematised: divergence from the plan is a deficit, not a legitimate construal.

Assessment ceases to explore possibility; it enforces predictability.

2. Authority is systematised

Authority follows the same logic:

• In a relational model, authority is epistemic, emerging from careful interpretation, dialogue, and contextual understanding.

• In the ladder model, authority resides in the system and its structures.

• Analysts, teachers, and evaluators become enforcers of alignment rather than facilitators of meaning-making.

What was interpretive becomes managerial; what was relational becomes procedural.

3. The narrowing of semiotic space

The consequences are subtle but far-reaching:

• The instance is compressed; only the expected patterns are visible.

• Innovation is risky; interpretive experimentation is discouraged.

• Semiotic richness — multimodality, embodiment, situated agency — is sidelined.

The architecture of assessment mirrors the ladder: rigid, hierarchical, directive.

4. Pedagogical consequences

For learners:

• Success is measured by trajectory through staged genres, not by engagement with semiotic potential.

• Agency is abstracted: students are instructed to follow the system, not to enact it.

• Learning becomes alignment, not exploration; certainty replaces interpretive judgment.

Pedagogy, like analysis, becomes a mechanism for enforcing the ladder.

5. Epistemic consequences

For knowledge production:

• System-centric authority privileges predictability over discovery.

• Complexity, ambiguity, and relationality are filtered out of evaluation.

• The ladder creates the illusion of control while suppressing possibility.

The very act of measuring success constrains what is considered meaningful.

6. Looking ahead

The next post will trace how ladder logic reshapes agency, examining the ethical and semiotic implications of compressing the instance, sidelining embodied actors, and delegating meaning to pre-determined structures.