Chapter 4: Assessment in Higher Education 4.1 Introduction
4.2 Participative assessment and its contribution to student learning .1 Introduction
4.2.5 Participative assessment and autonomous learning
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accessed and understood. Such approaches seek to empower students to challenge dominant ideas and to construct themselves as autonomous learners with the ultimate goal of preparing them to act as autonomous professionals.
For Reynolds and Trehan (2000: 272) the involvement of students in assessment communities must go beyond dialogue: it must also result in visible changes in classroom relations. Such changes must include students in the area where power is most directly exerted in classrooms – the grading of summative assessment tasks (Taras, 2001: 612). Reynolds and Trehan (2000:
272) also suggest that “if students know that [teachers] will intervene if they think the marking is unsatisfactory, the procedure cannot be claimed to be either participative or empowering” (ibid.). This view is supported by Taras (2001: 612), who argues that “if students do not have access to the summative assessment process, then any involvement in the powerbase of higher education can only be peripheral”. While I share these sentiments, I believe it is important to recognise the importance of assessment communities within such processes.
Learners and teachers may reach different conclusions in assessing tasks, but within the parameters of a learning community such disagreements should be welcomed as opportunities for further dialogue and learning. Students must be confident that their assessments will have a direct influence on final results or grades, but teachers should not be excluded from these processes. Precisely how assessment decisions are taken and who takes them is one of the many issues assessment communities must negotiate. The process encourages the challenging of assessment decisions and consequently requires assessors – students and teachers – to clearly articulate why and how decisions have been reached. By involving students in assessment communities, participative assessment not only empowers students, but can also support teachers’ efforts to promote deep approaches to learning by requiring students to articulate how and whether they have demonstrated the capacity to meet course outcomes.
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teachers must consider how practices designed to promote autonomous learning within the context of a course should also consider the consequential validity of such approaches in preparing students to become competent assessors of their own work beyond the confines of the classroom. In this section, I consider how involvement in participative assessment processes can develop students’ skills in both of these domains.
Race (2001:6-7) argues that by involving students in participative assessment processes, teachers in higher education can assist students in developing a range of transferable skills relating to the organisation of their learning by encouraging them to reflect on and to take stock of their progress. This process of taking stock of learning suggests that teachers must create opportunities for students to set learning goals for themselves, monitor their own progress, assess whether they have achieved their objectives and correct errors that they have made (Mok, et al.: 2006: 416). Teachers must seek to create enabling environments that help students take responsibility for their own learning and that minimise the students’ dependence on teachers for prescribed outcomes, pre-specified criteria and judgments about the quality of learning (Boud, 1995: 43).
The introduction of participative assessment approaches can have an important influence on student development. The fact that assessment strategies have a significant influence in defining not only what, but how students approach their learning is widely accepted. If, as in traditional assessment practice, teachers fail to involve students in the kinds of assessment communities referred to in the previous section, they encourage students to see themselves as passive subjects of assessment practice. In contrast, teachers who deliberately set out to involve students as active members of assessment communities communicate clear messages regarding the need for students to take responsibility for setting learning goals for themselves, determining whether they have achieved their goals and considering how to bridge the gap between objectives and outcomes. Unless students develop both the skills and dispositions of assessors of their own work their ability to become effective independent and autonomous learners will be limited (Stefani, 1998: 345). Similarly, Boud and Falchikov (2006: 403) suggest that “if students are always attending to the judgements of others they may not acquire the broader set of skills that enable them to do this for themselves”.
Race (2001: 6-7) suggests the skills and dispositions students develop as autonomous learners are also likely to be invaluable in the context of life-long learning and in professional
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development long after students have completed their degrees. This view is shared by Boud and Falchikov (2006: 339), who argue that:
The raison d’être of a higher education is that it provides a foundation on which a lifetime of learning in work and other social settings can be built.
Whatever else it achieves, it must equip students to learn beyond the academy once the infrastructure of teachers, courses and formal assessment is no longer available.
These views have important implications for the way participative assessment approaches are conceptualised in higher education. Tan (2007: 117-120) argues there are at least three different ways in which participative assessment practice is conceptualised by teachers, namely: 1.) teacher-driven self-assessment – where students relate their assessments to their understanding of the teacher’s personal expectations; 2.) programme-driven self-assessment - where students’ engagement with assessment approaches is limited to developing their understanding of the programme objectives and 3.) future-driven self-assessment – where the future need for students to be able to self-assess their work in professional contexts is the principal goal of involving students in participative assessment. Tan (2007: 116) suggests that these conceptions should be envisaged as “evolving subsets, each subsuming and building on the previous conception”. Recognising that future-driven self-assessment incorporates the development of students’ understanding of programme objectives, my own view is to lean heavily towards this last conception.
This is particularly so because of the potential of participative assessment to engage students in the development of other generic skills and dispositions they will need to draw on in their professional careers. These skills include teamwork, cooperation, interpersonal skills, group problem-solving, and written and verbal communication (Falchikov, 2007: 136). The act of providing or receiving feedback from a peer provides students with a rich experience they can reflect on in developing competencies they are likely to need throughout their careers. By engaging students in assessment communities and providing them with opportunities to share responsibility for each other’s learning through peer feedback processes – discussed further in the next sub-section – participative assessment can, in and of itself, present authentic opportunities for developing valuable generic skills and dispositions.
Furthermore, as has already been noted, teachers are preparing students for professional practice in a world of constant change, where organisational hierarchies are becoming flatter and where autonomous professional action is expected. From the very start of their careers,
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graduates are likely to be expected to work with limited supervision in tackling unfamiliar tasks. Work will become learning and learning will become work (Barnett, 2000). In preparing students for such an environment, participative assessment offers students opportunities to become “self-initiating seekers of formative assessment for their ongoing learning and tasks throughout their lives” (Boud, 2000: 159) and to equip them to “develop their own skills in putting together assessment schemes of formative assessment” (ibid.).
They must also develop discernment in deciding how to utilise feedback they have received, and this discernment forms part of the process of self-assessment. Unless students recognise the value of seeking out formative assessment (feedback) and critically applying it to their work, they will be ill-prepared for professional careers. Boud and Tyree (1995: 93) agree, warning that the “lack of self assessment ability may eventually produce effects which will meet the adverse assessment of the person by his or her peers, but such peer assessment may be too late to have the necessary corrective effect” .