This document discusses rethinking assessment to value authentic learning and identity development. It advocates moving from standardized competency-based assessment to more deliberative assessment that makes student learning visible through evidence from multiple contexts. Deliberative assessment involves inclusive processes where students are privileged informants and assessment helps make programs more responsive. Competencies could serve as boundary objects for mutually accountable connection between individual and organizational learning. Eportfolios are proposed as a way to make multiple understandings of contested outcomes visible through students' reasoning and use of evidence from experience. The role of evidence in eportfolios is complex, and reflection on selections of digital evidence can distinguish portfolios and support reflective learning.
Deliberative Assessment for Integrative, Reflective, and Lifewide Learning
1. Deliberative Assessment for Integrative, Reflective, and Lifewide Learning Darren Cambridge June 8, 2010 PebbleBash, Telford, UK
2. Rethinking Assessment Assessment means making student learning visible so that it can inform programmatic and curricular innovation and demonstrate effect on learning and identity development
3. Looking afresh means asking: What kinds of learning do we value? What assessment process do those values imply? How does this change how we think about outcomes and evidence?
4. What do we value about individual learning and identity development?
5. Authenticity Finding truth through examination of what is unique about oneself Enacting that difference through creative expression Protecting choice as a core value
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7. Social Authenticity Becoming an authentic individual is not a matter of recoiling from society in order to find and express the inner self. What it involves is the ability to be a reflective individual who discerns what is genuinely worth pursuing within the social context in which he or she is situated.
10. Integrity Consistency and coherence over time (lifelong) Consistency and coherence across roles (lifewide) Achieved and asserted through narrative
11. From Subject to Author Ordering role of institutions and traditions shifted to individual From being our values, relationships, and experiences to having them Overarching principles that mediate competition Thinking about the self as a system you compose and conduct
12. Symphonic Employability Career identity integrates Human capital (competencies) Social capital Adaptability Cultivated by narrative - Ashford et. al.
14. Environments for Growth In both personal and professional domains Learning as attitude toward life Supported by inviting environments rich in content and people Technology as a means to guide and support Communicated by the portfolios as a whole Can inform her profession
17. Competencies Communication Critical Thinking Strategic Problem Solving Valuing Group Interaction Global Understanding Effective Citizenship Aesthetic Awareness Information Technology
21. Useful Cost-effective Reasonably accurate and truthful Multiple Direct Planned, organized, systematized and sustained Kinds of direct evidence Portfolios of student work Student reflections on their values, attitudes, and beliefs, if developing those are intended outcomes of the course or program
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23. Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts
38. Deliberative Assessment Student are privileged informants about their own learning. Evidence of learning needs to come from multiple contexts, and the relationships between them need to be articulated. Assessment should be a system of deliberative processes inclusive of all stakeholders that makes programs more responsive to them.
39. A New Role for Competencies Standardized: Matching performance to apre-defined set of outcomes Deliberative: Capture standards all stakeholders value as enacted in practice and examining alignment of both student and programmatic performance
40. Competencies in Organizational Learning Standardized: Articulating expectations to students Deliberative: Means for mutually accountable connection between individual and organizational learning Boundary objects: “Boundary objects are objects that are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Leigh Star 1989)
41. Ineffable Essentially Contested Ineffable outcomes: Things we all think are important but don’t think we can measure E.g., ethics, leadership, social responsibility Essentially contested concept (Gallie, 1956) More optimal development because of contestation
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43. Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts
63. Academics as Test of Self We intended for curricular content to be an central source of evidence and ideas and strategies, but it didn’t show up this way Class work functioned as A demonstration of character virtues An experience A goal putting aspiration towards those virtues in action
64. Complicating Evidence Eportfolios are reflection on a selection of digital evidence Link between evidence and reflection distinguishes eportfolios and other digital means for supporting reflective learning Managing information about knowledge, skills, abilities and experiences “Evidence” is the documents included in a portfolio on which the author reflects Use of evidence in practice is more complex than the eportfolio literature often acknowledges
65. An Emergent Typology of Use of Evidence in ePortfolios Characteristics of item used as evidence Agency Media Purpose of incorporating evidence Rhetorical Function Object Characteristics of associated learning activities Sponsorship Participation
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67. Matches and Mismatches Reflective description of evidence Content of evidence Local – site of specific evidence use Global – the whole portfolio Matches and mismatches yield more sophisticated understanding and resources for supporting portfolio authors
70. Public Displays of Connection Blogroll and friends lists as messages (Donath and boyd, 2004) Intentional performance of identity rather than a transparent representation of a social network beyond the system Network as implicit validation of profile information
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72. danah boyd as suicide girl “impression management is an inescapably collective process” (2008)
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76. Available from Jossey-Bass, October, 2010 Stylu Published by Stylus, 2009 dcambrid@gmail.com ncepr.org/darren(slides here)
Notas del editor
Disciplines and professional organizations already have standards from which you can begin – you probably know these better than I do for you fields
There’s an extent to which this is valuable and necessary. I want the doctor operating on me to to have specific skills and knowledge that is well-defined and tested and about which there is a strong consensus on the profession. Deliberative assessment should not be seen as a wholesale replacement for other forms of assessment