Chapter 4: Assessment in Higher Education 4.1 Introduction
4.1.2 Assessment for learning and OBE in South Africa
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(2005), which state explicitly that “for assessment to be meaningful it should be fully integrated into teaching and learning and should guide decisions about the activities that will support and enhance learning” (SAQA, 2005: 14). Its primary function should be “understood as supporting learning” (ibid.: 13). It is this role of assessment in promoting learning and contributing to the development of students’ evolving identities as future professionals and lifelong learners that is the principal interest of this study.
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curriculum, particularly with regard to our choice of assessment strategies (see Du Toit, 2007).
These conceptions of learning relate closely to the three conceptions of teaching identified by Biggs (1999a: 23-24) who suggests a hierarchy of attitudes towards teaching that progresses from Level One (a focus on who the student is), to Level Two (a focus on what the teacher does) through to Level Three (a focus on what the student does). The transmission-based approaches of the first two levels support the reproductive learning described in the first three levels of Säljö’s (1982) hierarchy, while the transformative conceptions require an active engagement of students in reaching understanding or developing competencies. The teacher’s role shifts from a didactic pedagogy to the facilitation of learning that guides students as they grapple with what an appropriate level of learning means and which match learning and assessment activities to students’ needs (see also Trigwell, 2001: 66). There appears to be a strong relationship between conceptions of teaching and conceptions of learning, which are also evident in Grundy’s (1987) conceptions of curriculum. Learning limited to the acquisition of predefined knowledge and skills is a natural by-product of the curriculum-as- product, while the promotion of transformative learning occurs within the practical and emancipatory aims of the curriculum-as-practice and the curriculum-as-praxis.
Regardless of which interest informs the curriculum there is a comprehensive body of research which supports Brown, Bull and Pendlebury’s view (1997: 6 in Luckett and Sutherland, 2000: 98):
Assessment defines for students what is important, what counts, how they will spend their time and how they will see themselves as learners. If you want to change student learning then change the methods of assessment.
There seems to be a common recognition that: “Students often derive more understanding of a course from the demands of its assessment systems than from tutors and course hand- books” (Light and Cox, 2001: 173). Learning, Boud (1995: 36) suggests, “is a function of both teaching and the context in which it occurs… [and] how it is interpreted by [students]
and the action which they take as a result of these interpretations”. Theorists addressing the relationship between assessment and learning share the view that not only does assessment provide students with vital cues concerning the relative importance of course content and competencies, but it can also promote particular approaches to learning, with many making reference to the concepts of deep, surface and strategic approaches to learning originally
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developed by Marton and Säljö (1976 in Ramsden, 1992: 41) (see Ramsden, 1992; Boud, 1995; Brockbank and McGill, 1998; Biggs, 1999; Light and Cox, 2001). These approaches to learning15 can be understood in the following ways:
Surface approaches to learning are characterised by “an intention to use the available meanings in an instrumental way to meet the requirements of a situation” (Light and Cox, 2001: 49). These meanings remain “alien”, externally imposed and are often “simply approached through memorization” (ibid.). Students focus on the recall of isolated facts.
Personal engagement is limited and few connections are made between personal experience, the current learning task and previous knowledge (Light and Cox, 2001: 49-50).
Deep approaches to learning are characterised by the student’s desire to understand ideas for him- or herself, relate these ideas to prior knowledge and experience and to seek
“patterns and underlying principles” (Light and Cox, 2001: 49). Students engage meaningfully with tasks and their focus is on a high conceptual level. Learning is experienced as challenging, satisfying and sometimes exhilarating (Biggs, 1999a: 16). The goal for the student is personal development and internal satisfaction.
Strategic approaches to learning suggest a combination of the above. Approaches are selected based on both extrinsic motivations (Which approach will attract the greatest reward?) and intrinsic motivations (How satisfying is the learning experience?). The choice of approach will be dependent on a range of factors, including students’ workload at a particular time and their perceptions regarding the future relevance of the subject.
Encouraging students to engage deeply with subjects should be the goal of all teachers and assessment has an important role to play in this regard. Ramsden (1992: 69) suggests:
“unsuitable assessment methods impose irresistible pressures on a student to take the wrong approach to learning tasks” and Luckett and Sutherland (2000:100) argue that:
Surface approaches are encouraged, inter alia, by assessment methods which rely entirely on recall of either trivial or procedural knowledge and poor or absent feedback on progress, while deep [approaches to] learning [are]
encouraged, inter alia, by methods which encourage active, long-term engagement with tasks.
15 Approaches to learning theories have not been universally accepted, as is evident in Haggis’s (2003) critique, which questions the level of ‘scientific rigour’ underpinning this model, its wide acceptance by researchers and teachers and motives of those who have adopted it as “truth”. Responding to this critique, Marshall and Case (2005) agree that further empirical research would enhance the conceptual basis underpinning the theory, but reject the critique of an inherent elitism. They argue that theory does provide a valuable heuristic for thinking about teaching and learning.
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The understanding that assessment exerts an important influence on student learning suggests that it has the potential to derail even the most carefully considered teaching and learning strategies. As Boud et al. (1999: 413) argue: “Assessment is the single most powerful influence on learning in formal courses and, if not designed well, can easily undermine the positive features of an important strategy in the repertoire of teaching and learning approaches”. Ramsden (1992: 186) concurs, arguing that if assessment is seen “as an external imposition to be negotiated in order to earn a grade, rather than a way of learning and of demonstrating understanding, it is an optimal recipe for surface approaches”.
One approach to curriculum development that accommodates these concerns is Biggs’s (1999a: 18-19) model of constructive alignment. Based on an adaptation of Dunkin and Biddle’s (1974 in Biggs, 1999a: 18-19) linear presage-process-product model, Biggs describes an interactive system where meaning is negotiated at all learning moments in the curriculum. The original model proposes a linear approach in which students bring prior knowledge, skills and attitudes to the learning environment, while teachers attempt to create an enabling context by, among other things, determining objectives and planning teaching and assessment activities. These separate entities comprise the presage component of the model. In the process component these merge in learning focused activities, which finally result in the achievement of learning outcomes or products. The original model is informed by a curriculum-as-product conception, while Biggs’s (ibid.) approach is largely informed by the curriculum-as-practice conception, with students and teachers continuously involved in the negotiation of meaning. Biggs’s notion of constructive alignment appears frequently in policy documents and has evidently also had a significant influence on SAQA’s understanding of curriculum and the place of assessment in the curriculum (SAQA, 2005: 3).
Lambert and Lines (2000: 129-30) argue that assessment practice within the competency or authentic approach has been dominated by two fundamentally contrasting discourses of teaching and learning – behaviourism and constructivism. Behaviourist understandings are underpinned by a social efficiency understanding of education intended to produce compliant graduates ill-equipped to challenge dominant norms (Doolittle and Camp, 1999: 3).
Behaviourist thinking assumes an objective truth that can be transmitted to students by teachers in a process where learning involves students accumulating bits of knowledge which are taught, learnt and graded in developmental stages. In this view outcomes can be objectively defined and their attainment assessed through objective testing (Shepard, 2000: 5;
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Doolittle and Camp, 1999: 3). In contrast, constructivism involves students in active processes of mental construction and meaning making, in which “existing knowledge structures and beliefs work to enable or impede new learning” (Shepard, 2000: 6).
“Intelligent thought involves self-monitoring and awareness about when and how to use skills” and where expertise “develops in a field of study as a principled and coherent way of thinking and representing problems, not just an accumulation of information” (ibid.). With its objective epistemology and its interest in control, behaviourism is clearly informed by the technical interest, while constructivism’s subjective epistemology and its interest in understanding for action is informed by practical and emancipatory interests (Grundy, 1987).
This view is supported by the South African Council on Higher Education (CHE, 2004: 12), arguing that:
Most theories that understand learning to be transformative are based on constructivist notions of cognitive development. In terms of such notions, students are understood to build and change their existing meaning and knowledge structures in order to assimilate or accommodate new knowledge.
The emphasis is on the student actively constructing knowledge for him/herself through learning activities or ‘performances of understanding’ and through social interaction or mediation by the lecturer. [My emphasis.]
This view is also shared by Biggs (1999a), who notes that his model of constructive alignment is possible only within constructivist understandings of curriculum development.
In suggesting that for assessment-for-learning to achieve its full potential it needs to be underpinned by a constructivist understanding of learning and teaching, I recognise that constructivism is a broad church (Doolittle and Camp, 1999: 22; Light and Cox, 2001: 18) Constructivist adherents adopt a variety of positions in relation to whether (1) knowledge is discovered or created, (2) individually or socially constructed and (3) passively or actively constructed (see Philips, 1995 adapted by Light and Cox, 2001: 18). They suggest that each of these should be seen as polar ends of three distinct intersecting continuums (ibid.). My own inclination, based on observations of learning processes, is towards a social constructivist perspective in which knowledge “is thought to develop internally, but in a process driven by social interaction with the outside world… [and] where the context, in particular the social context, is of prime importance” (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999: 13).
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My own position in relation to constructivist thinking has important implications for this study because this understanding sees learning as a social process involving continual dialogue with peers, teachers and texts. Teaching means going beyond the identification of objectives and testing how well they are met. It includes identifying what students could achieve with help (Lambert and Lines, 2000: 30). The process is as important as the product.
Assessment is integral to teaching and learning, and feedback – or “feedforward” (see Knight, 2006: 446) – goes beyond correcting mistakes and misunderstanding in students’
work. It involves creating opportunities for students to develop their cognitive capacities.
These capabilities, Doolittle and Camp (1999: 12) suggest, consist of: “(1) knowledge of cognition (i.e., knowing what one knows, knowing what one is capable of doing, and knowing what to do and when to do it) and (2) regulation of cognition (i.e., the on-going task of planning, monitoring, and evaluating one’s own learning and cognition)”.
In the next sub-section I draw on a range of assessment theories in establishing a foundation on which to ground my exploration of the potential of self-, peer and co-assessment in promoting learning and developing professional identities in the next chapter.