Assessment Revisited
John Heron
Chapter 4 from Developing Student Autonomy in Learning,
edited by David Boud, London, Kogan Page, 1988.
Rationality and power
The prevailing model for assessing student work in
higher education is an authoritarian one. Staff exercise unilateral
intellectual authority: they decide what students shall learn, they
design the programme of learning, they determine criteria of
assessment and make the assessment of the student. The student does
not participate in decision-making at all about his learning
objectives or his learning programme, nor in setting criteria and
applying them in assessment procedures. He is subject to the
intellectual authority of an academic elite who have the power to
exercise a very high degree of social control on the exercise of his
intelligence and on his future social destiny by intellectual
grading.
The issue here is a political one; that is, it is to
do with the exercise of power. And power is simply to do with who
makes decisions about whom. I have power over people if I
make unilateral decisions to which they are subject. I share power
with people if I make decisions on a bilateral basis in
consultation with them. The idea of having a rational power over
another's rationality seems to me to be internally contradictory.
Exercise of rationality involves dialogue, discussion, and
reciprocity of exchange, in which each party to the dialogue gives
reasons for a point of view and has the inalienable right rationally
to assent or dissent from the view put forward by the other party.
As a rational being I can only consult with others about decisions
that affect the exercise and assessment of their own rationality.
Their rationality is impugned if I do not honour it as a party to
the decision-making process.
Does the student entering higher education have a
fully-fledged rational capacity? If he does not, if he is in some
sort of pre-rational developmental stage, then of course I can offer
the argument in loco parentis: it is my job as staff member
to make rational decisions on his behalf that will enable him to
emerge from a pre-rational to a fully rational stage of development.
I cannot consult him because he is not present with a sufficiently
developed intelligence to make an adequate contribution to the
consultation. But does anyone seriously hold that the average
19-year-old human being entering higher education does not have
fully fledged rational capacity? Surely not, since it is the general
presupposition of higher education that the student has the
intellectual competence to acquire a fully rational grasp of a
particular discipline or subject area.
How is it, then, that he is not entitled by the
prevailing system to acquire and actively exercise a fully rational
grasp of his own learning objectives, of the programme that is
relevant to achieve them, of criteria of assessment and the actual
process of assessment of his own work? He is seen as rationally
competent to grasp the discipline taught by his academic superiors
and to respond appropriately to their assessment. Yet,
paradoxically, he is not seen as rationally competent to
participate in determining his own academic destiny, nor in
assessing his own competence.
The traditional arguments advanced to justify this
state of affairs are something like the following. (i) Academic
staff are the culture carriers of our civilization: they sustain and
develop the values and intellectual standards of our central bodies
of knowledge. (ii) Adequately to grasp and learn to perpetuate these
values and standards requires a process of student apprenticeship
and initiation in which staff unilaterally model, exemplify and
apply to students the values and standards. (iii) Only when thus
unilaterally initiated can the student himself eventually become a
culture carrier and initiator of future generations of students
(Peters, 1966).
This initiation model is hierarchical and
authoritarian. It does not deal with the argument that if a student
is rationally competent to grasp a major discipline at the adult
level, then he is competent ipso facto to participate in
decisions about the educational process whereby he can grasp it, and
in decisions about whether he has grasped it; and that if he is not
invited to do these things together, his rationality is
thereby impugned and offered a distorted development. The
initiation model is a rationalization of the invalid exercise of
intellectual power over other rational beings.
I am not arguing that if a student is deemed
competent to grasp an adult discipline he should also be deemed
competent to decide all on his own the best way of going about
grasping it or to decide all on his own that he has adequately
grasped it. I am not declaring the redundancy of teachers, of
academic guides and mentors. I am arguing that for the young adult,
three things go together: the capacity to get to know the content of
a discipline, the capacity to know how to get to know it, and the
capacity to know that he has got to know it. Or put in other words:
the capacity to learn, the capacity to know how to learn, the
capacity to know that he has learned. For a well-rounded education,
these three facts of intellectual capacity need to be developed
together. And they can be developed by a significant amount of
self-directed practice, facilitated and guided by, and in
collaboration with, teachers. The initiation of students therefore
needs to be more reciprocal and consultative, with students not
simply learning their subjects but also participating in decisions
about how they learn them and in the assessment of their learning.
And as we shall see in a later section, I do not
advocate that everything about the educational process is to be a
matter of negotiation and consultation between staff and students.
If absolutely everything is negotiable, then the negotiator
stands for nothing, is not committed to any principles or
values, in short, is not really educated. For the mark of an
educated person, I believe, is that through study, reflection,
dialogue and experience he or she has at any given time a considered
commitment to certain values which provide the stable ground from
which free discussion and negotiation proceed.
What, then, are further arguments against the
current system of unilateral intellectual authority exercised by
staff over students? In the following section I will present a
radical critique in a somewhat extreme form, and will redress the
balance toward the end of the section, while retaining much of the
force of the critique.
A radical critique of unilateral control and
assessment
Staff unilaterally assess students, some of whom
then become staff and unilaterally assess more students, and so on.
Where did it all start? However much it may be obscured by a variety
of other cultural factors, for any domain of human inquiry there is
a source point when its originators flourished through self-directed
learning and inquiry and through self and peer assessment. These or
their successors at some point become the original unilateral
academic assessors and commence their role with a significant
threefold act of assessment. They assess and continue to assess
themselves and each other as competent in having mastered their
branch of knowledge through self-directed inquiry. They assess
themselves as competent to assess others. And they assess others as
relatively incompetent to be self- and peer-assessing and
self-directing in learning and discovery. They thus set up a
unilateral assessment and education system from which they
necessarily exempted themselves, and in the absence of which one may
assume their own vigorous discovery, excitement in learning and
originality flourished. This is a phenomenon within the politics of
knowledge. Knowledge is always potential power. If I am among the
first to establish knowledge in some field, I can use that knowledge
to establish a power base in the social order, by discriminating
unilaterally for or against others on the grounds of my judgements
about their relative competence or incompetence. If I can make
others, through their hunger for power, collude with my unjust
discrimination toward them (even though it may be exercised in their
favour), then I have established a new profession, a body of
experts, who sustain their power and perpetuate the injustice
through the myth of maintaining excellence. The founding treason is
that founders through this professional dominion betray their own
origins in self-directed learning, self and peer assessment.
Unilateral control and assessment of students by
staff mean that the process of education is at odds with the
objective of that process. I believe the objective of the process is
the emergence of an educated person: that is, a person who is
self-determining who can set his own learning objectives, devise a
rational programme to attain them, set criteria of excellence by
which to assess the work he produces, and assess his own work in the
light of those criteria indeed all that we attribute to and
hope for from the ideal academic himself. But the
traditional educational process does not prepare the student
to acquire any of these self-determining competencies. In each
respect, the staff do it for or to the students. An educational
process that is so determined by others cannot seriously intend to
have as its outcome a person who is truly self-determining.
Authoritarian control and assessment of students
breed intellectual and vocational conformity in students. Given a
pre-determined syllabus, learning in a way dictated by others,
taught by those who make the continuous and final assessment often
according to hidden and undisclosed criteria, the average student
has an understandable tendency to play safe, to conform his thinking
and performance to what he divines to be the expectations of his
intellectual masters, to get through his final exams by reproducing
what he believes to be staff-approved knowledge and critical
judgement.
But there is not only conformity in terms of the
intellectual content of the students' work. There is a subtler, more
insidious, more intellectually distorting and durable conformity.
For the student absorbs the whole authoritarian educational process,
and those students who go on to become future staff reproduce the
unilateral model with remarkable lack of critical acumen and
awareness. It is notorious that academics, who normally would pride
themselves on their ability critically to evaluate the assumptions
on which a body of theory and practice is based, are so uncritical
and unthinking about the educational process which they mediate.
The authoritarian educational model is thus an agent
of social control at the higher education end of the spectrum of
conditioning procedures to which the person is subjected in our
society. It precipitates into the adult world a person whose
intellect is developed somewhat in relation to the content of
knowledge, but truncated, distorted and oppressed in relation to the
politics of knowledge, the process of truly acquiring it. A general
social and political attitude of conformity and a relative sense of
powerlessness is reinforced by a partial sort of intellectual
competence: 'To survive I must go along with the system and divine
what is expected of me. I must accept the fact that I am here so
that other people can do it for me and to me and tell me whether I
have made it or not. And if I subscribe to all this with sufficient
intellectual application I may if I am lucky arrive at a point where
I can dictate the system that other people have to conform to.'
Unilateral control and assessment of students by
staff generates the wrong sort of motivation in students. They tend
to become extrinsically motivated to learn and work. The degree is a
ticket to status, career, and opportunity in the adult social world;
it is designed by others, awarded by others and withheld by others,
according to criteria of others. The student's intellectual masters
manipulate his motivation without ever involving him as a
self-determining being. External rewards and punishments tend to
motivate learning rather than intrinsic factors such as authentic
interest and involvement in the subject matter, the excitement of
inquiry and discovery, the internal commitment to personally
considered standards of excellence, self- and peer-determined
debate, dialogue and discussion.
Such extrinsic motivation to learn can breed
intellectual alienation: the student becomes habituated to exercise
his intellect in a way that is divorced from his real interests,
curiosities and learning needs. The acquisition of knowledge loses
the excitement of discovery and becomes the onerous assimilation of
a mass of alien and oppressive information. Such alienation during
the learning process while acquiring knowledge and skills, can
extend after qualification and graduation, into vocational
alienation: the person exercises his vocational role in a way that
is cut off from his real needs, interests, concerns and feelings,
and hence uses the role in his human relations with his clients
somewhat defensively and rigidly. There are two extreme variants of
this: the professionalization of misfits and the misfit of
professionalism. The former occurs when the extrinsic attractions of
a profession's power and status seduce into it those whose real
interest and abilities lie elsewhere. The latter occurs when the
professional blindly and unawarely tries to close the gap between
self and role by compulsively and inappropriately 'helping' his
clients.
An authoritarian educational system is only able to
focus on intellectual and technical competence, on the cultivation
of theoretical and applied intellect. Personal development,
interpersonal skills, ability to be aware of and work with feelings
all these are excluded from the formal curricular educational
process, since an authoritarian system represses in staff member,
in student, and in the relation between them the kinds of
autonomy, reciprocity and mutuality required for the building of
such development, skills and ability.
The roots of this situation lie deep in the
philosophical past, but a past that is still present with us in a
very pervasive way. Our educational system rests on an ancient,
hierarchical view of the person. In Aristotelian terms, intellect is
that which supremely differentiates man from animals, and the
cultivation of this prime differentium, in its purely theoretical
form, is that which constitutes the highest virtue. In Platonic
terms, intellect rules over the nobler emotions, which under the
guidance of intellect rule over the baser passions. This
authoritarian, hierarchical role anciently ascribed to intellect is
with us still today.
The prevailing norm about feelings, in our
educational culture and indeed in our culture at large, is that they
are to be controlled. The message is unmistakable, coming over in
all kinds of tacit and explicit ways: the intelligent, educated
adult is one who knows how to control feelings. But if control is
the only guiding norm, it can rapidly degenerate into
suppression, repression, denial and then blind displacement of
feelings. The authoritarian academic projects unawarely his denied
feelings on to the students: hence academic intransigence about
reform, for if academic control of students is a way of acting out
denied feelings within, it will not lightly be given up. Only
significant personal development among staff can liberate them from
this particular compulsion.
The unilateral model of control and assessment in
education is a form of political exploitation, of oppression by
professionalism. The academic maintains the myth of superior
excellence and educational expertise from which the student is
necessarily debarred and which it would be irresponsible and
dangerous for the student in any degree to practise. Thus the
academics, by the control and assessment system they run, condition
students to see themselves as inadequate and dependent with respect
to all major decisions about the educational process (learning
objectives, programme design, assessment). So staff maintain their
power as a privileged elite to determine unilaterally the future
social destinies of their dependent students. Psychodynamically, the
academics deal unawarely with their own distressed dependency needs
by conditioning students to be dependent on them. The result is that
students are oppressed and manipulated by educationally extrinsic
factors, by being assessed and graded all in the name of 'higher'
education.
Finally, of course, unilateral assessment methods
are notoriously unreliable. Different examiners marking the same
scripts show significant variability; the same examiner may vary
considerably the stringency with which he marks on one occasion
compared to another. All this adds up to a very palpable injustice
so long as the assessment is unilateral. The only way to avoid such
injustice is to make the student party to the assessment procedure,
and hence party to the general unreliability. I cannot cry injustice
when I have been a free negotiating participant in the assessment of
my work
The whole of this radical critique as presented
above is something of a caricature. It overstates the case. So I
will briefly mention some of the main considerations which
countermand it and present a more balanced view.
Academics do continually engage in a variety of
informal and more formal equivalents of self and peer assessment, if
not with students, then at any rate amongst themselves: in offering
their written work for comment and judgement from their peers, both
before and after its presentation or publication. And this at least
provides a model for students in their professional work after
graduation.
The traditional educational system has produced and
continues to produce persons who may be to a greater or lesser
degree self-determining. This is not least because, whatever its
defects of method, central to its teaching is the importance of
rational critical thinking, of assessment of views and of evidence.
So the central precepts which it teaches may survive, more or less
impaired, the methods by which they are taught.
And the corollary, of course, is that some academic
tutors do genuinely seek to elicit in their students sound
reasoning, judgement and critical appraisal, and do genuinely
rejoice in students who exhibit originality, intellectual competence
and independence of judgement.
An increasing though still relatively small number
of academics are becoming critical of the assumptions underlying the
traditional educational process which they are mediating to
students. Staff development and innovation is a growing movement in
higher education.
Despite the rigidity of the educational system, both
staff and, to a lesser extent, students can become intrinsically
motivated and committed to pursue standards of excellence in
pursuing their disciplines. And some tutors do exhibit great
sensitivity, skill and humanity in dialogue, both intellectual and
personal, with their students. Not all academics or professionals
use their roles defensively.
The positive account is therefore not
inconsiderable. But in my view the general thrust of the radical
critique prevails and requires an alternative model of the person, a
redistribution of educational power, and a new approach to
assessment.
An alternative model of the person
The hierarchical, authoritarian model of
intellect-in-charge referred to above has served its historical and
cultural purpose. The time is ripe for an alternative, democratic
model: that of equal human capacities which mutually support and
enhance each other intellectual capacities for understanding our
world and ourselves, affective capacities for caring for and
delighting in other persons and ourselves, conative capacities for
making real choices about how we want to live, relate to others and
shape our world. On this model, intellectual competence, emotional
and interpersonal competence and self-determining competence go hand
in hand. You cannot properly cultivate any one without at the same
time cultivating the other two. Single-stranded development
necessarily involves distortion of that strand.
Staff-student collaboration and consultation about
the educational process that is, with respect to objectives,
programme design and assessment require, for all concerned, the
exercise of discriminating choice, the cultivation of intellectual
grasp, awareness of and skill in managing feelings, and other
interpersonal skills. Thus it honours the alternative, democratic
model of the person.
The democratic model also generates a more
sophisticated set of guiding norms for the management of feeling. It
proposes not only conscious control of feelings of all kinds when
appropriate, but also spontaneous expression of positive feelings
when appropriate; conscious, intentional discharge or abreaction of
distress feelings at appropriate times and places and with
appropriate skills; the transmutation of tense emotion through art,
meditation, symbolic imagination and related methods.
The ability to work with feelings in this
comprehensive and flexible manner is a precondition of political
liberation. The interlocking compulsions to oppress and wield power,
and to be powerless, dependent and helpless, are rigidities of
character structure which each person needs to dissolve in himself
by uncovering and dispersing the hidden affect that holds them in
place. To exercise power with others in collaborative ways
requires the ability to be aware of and take charge of feelings to
dismantle tendencies to act out denied feelings through politically
oppressive or submissive behaviour. Skills in control, expression,
catharsis, and transmutation are the intra-psychic pillars of
political release.
The redistribution of educational power
The redistribution of power in educational
decision-making is what is at stake: who decides what about whom,
with respect to all the many and varied aspects of the educational
process. The main parts of the process are well-known to all of us.
I enumerate them here as a reminder that there is a very wide canvas
on which to experiment with different decision models. (1)
Objectives: (i) outcome objectives relating to what knowledge,
skills and attitudes students and staff are to acquire from a
course; (ii) process objectives relating to what sorts of behaviours
and experience are to go on during the course to achieve intended
outcomes. (2) The programme: which puts together (i) topics; (ii)
teaching and learning methods; (iii) time available; (iv) human
resources; (v) physical resources. (3) Assessment: of student
performance, continuous, periodically through the course, final at
its end. (4) Evaluation: of teaching and of the course as a whole,
again both continuous and final. Ancillary to the educational
process as such are: the selection of staff and of students; the
administrative structures that support it; and the underlying
philosophy and principles which it exemplifies.
Elaborating a point already made in the opening
section, it is absurd to suppose that everything on this list must
be a matter of staff-student negotiation and consultation. It is
absurd for two reasons, a strong and a weak one. The strong one
stems from the fact that staff are permanent members of the
educational institution; students are transient members. If staff
have really thought through the matter, there will be some parts of
the educational process which will be non-negotiable because they
exemplify principles to which staff are committed. These parts
define the sort of educational institution that staff are dedicated
to realize. It may be that students are to be significantly
self-assessing, or self-pacing or whatever else. These parts, stated
in the course prospectus, constitute the non-negotiated educational
contract to which prospective students are invited to subscribe, and
which defines the lesser, negotiable contracts the way in which
decision-making about the educational process is to be shared by
staff and students. Of course, any such initial contract need not be
totally rigid, but sooner or later the full-time educationalist,
qua moral being, will stand for principles, values and their
concomitant procedures which are necessary conditions for
entering into collaboration and negotiation with other staff and
students. They may change and develop as a function of interaction
with past students, but for the prospective student they are a
given, which define the culture into which he is entering.
The weak reason is that the transition from
authoritarian control to collaborative control needs to be gradual.
Conditioning induced by the traditional model is not undone in one
term, one course or even one decade. And there is scope for a great
deal of variety and experiment in effecting the transition. Thus if
we consider the main parts of the educational process objectives,
the programme, assessment, evaluation then within each of these
with their many components, and as between each of these,
decision-making can occur according to one of seven basic models.
1. |
Staff decide all issues |
|
|
2 |
Staff decide some |
Staff with students decide some |
|
3 |
Staff decide some |
Staff with students decide some |
Students decide some |
4 |
Staff decide some |
|
Students decide some |
5 |
|
Staff with students decide some |
Students decide some |
6 |
|
Staff with students decide all |
|
7 |
|
|
Students decide all |
On the left are unilateral decisions by staff, on
the right unilateral decisions by students, in the middle
collaborative staff-student decisions. Model 1 is the traditional
unilateral control model. Model 7 would make staff redundant or at
most resource persons waiting to be called on by students on terms
unilaterally determined by students. Model 6, I have already
suggested, is the absurd one: if everything is negotiable, then
staff do not stand for anything, have nothing on offer. The most
comprehensive model is model 3; and within itself it can encompass
the widest range of alternatives along a spectrum from staff control
to student control (Heron, 1977).
All this, I am sure, is a necessary precursor to
looking at issues of assessment. Assessment is the most political of
all the educational processes: it is the area where issues of power
are most at stake. If there is no staff-student collaboration on
assessment, then staff exert a stranglehold that inhibits the
development of collaboration with respect to all other processes.
Once varying mixtures of self, peer and collaborative assessment
replace unilateral assessment by staff, a completely new educational
climate can be created. Self-determination with respect to setting
learning objectives and to programme design is not likely to make
much headway, in my view, without some measure of self-assessment.
Self and peer assessment
What, then, is assessment for? Traditionally it has
had a two-fold purpose. First, to provide the student with knowledge
of results about his performance with regard to the content of the
course; this is an aid to revising past learning, and to preparing
future learning. This purpose is fulfilled by assessment of student
work during the course. Secondly, it awards the student a
certificate of intellectual competence, theoretical and/or applied,
which accredits him in the eyes of the wider community to fulfil
this or that social or occupational role. This purpose is fulfilled
typically by the final exam. Nowadays continuous assessment often
contributes a significant percentage to the final assessment, as
well as the final exam in which case the second purpose pervades
the whole course. But the traditional focus in both purposes is
entirely on what the student does with the content of the course.
If the student is seen as a self-determining person,
and thereby significantly self-assessing, then assessment will
include the process of learning as well as work done on the content
of learning. Thus if to whatever degree I set my own learning
objectives, devise my learning programme, set myself and perform
appropriate tasks then I can assess my objectives, the way I have
put the programme together, how I have worked, as well as the work I
have done. We are therefore immediately presented with the
importance of process assessment, as well as content assessment.
Assessing how I learn and how I provide evidence of
what I have learned is really more fundamental than assessing
what I have learned. The shift to self-direction and
self-assessment starts to make process more important than content.
Procedural competence is more basic than product competence, since
the former is a precondition of providing many good products, while
the latter is one off each good product is strictly a witness only
to itself.
Next, a self-determining person can only be so in
appropriate relations with other self-determining persons. Persons
are necessarily persons in relation and in dialogue, where each
enhances the identity and self-discovery of the other. On this view,
self-assessment is necessarily interwoven with peer assessment. I
refine my assessment of myself in the light of feedback from my
peers. My judgement of myself is not subordinate to that of my
peers. Rather, I use what my peers say to acquire the art of balance
between self-denigration and self-inflation. A just self-appraisal
requires the wisdom of my peer group.
In a self and peer assessment group each person
assesses himself before the group (using common or autonomous
criteria see below), then receives some feedback from members of
the group on whatever it is that is being assessed, and also on the
self-assessment itself. The process can also occur reciprocally in
pairs, but a group of six or eight gives more scope for peer impact.
The person receiving peer feedback is invited to use it
discriminatingly to refine his original self-assessment. On one
model there is no negotiation with peers about a final agreed
assessment: the primacy of self-assessment is affirmed, together
with the assumption, elegantly borne out in practice, that a
rational person has no interest in deluding himself about his own
competence and will use the insights of his peers to attain a just
self-appraisal. On another model self and peers negotiate until
agreement is reached about a final assessment.
Of course to participate effectively in this process
requires a measure of affective and interpersonal competence. I must
be willing to take risks, to disclose the full range of my
self-perceptions both positive and negative, to confront others
supportively with negative feedback, to discriminate between
authentic peer insights and unaware peer projections, to trust
others, and so on. Hence the importance in practice of the
alternative, democratic model of the person mentioned earlier, in
which intellectual competence, emotional and interpersonal
competence, and self-determining competence go hand in hand.
The student qua self-determining person,
then, engages in a combined self and peer assessment procedure that
looks at both the process and the content of learning, but gives
more weight to process than content. The purpose is threefold: (i)
to raise awareness of, and improve mastery of, the process of
learning in all its many aspects; (ii) to raise awareness about the
range of, and to improve mastery of, content; and (iii) at some
appropriate point along the road to accredit himself or herself in
association with the wisdom of his or her peers as competent to
offer this or the other service to the wider community.
I have used this self and peer assessment model for
one or other of the three purposes mentioned in a variety of
continuing education settings, such as co-counselling teacher
training courses, and in-service courses for a variety of different
professional groups. These courses are run as peer learning
communities (Heron, 1974) in which I function as facilitator and
participant, but in neither case do I have any special role as staff
assessor. My function as facilitator includes, inter alia,
enabling the group to work through an acceptable self and peer
assessment procedure. These courses are obviously not within the
aegis of the traditional undergraduate and postgraduate educational
bureaucracies: they are not awarded degrees and are not subject to
unilateral assessment by staff and external assessors. Hence they
have provided a very useful crucible for important innovation and
experiment, using an experiential research model (Heron, 1977,
1981), in which everyone involved is both student and subject on the
one hand, and tutor and educational researcher on the other, thus
combining within his own person a fundamental dialogue and a
collaborative inquiry, as well as engaging in a collaborative
inquiry with his peers.
A fundamental extension of the model takes it into
the heart of professional life. Self and peer assessment is in my
judgement the central way of maintaining and developing standards of
professional practice. A group of professional peers meet to pick
out the central procedures of their daily practice, to determine
criteria for performing those procedures well, and to devise some
form of self-assessment whereby they can sample their own daily work
and assess it in the light of the criteria. They then go off and
apply the self-assessment format to their daily work; and meet
together at a later date to take turns to disclose their
self-assessment findings to their peers and receive systematic
feedback on the disclosure. Such peer review audit of professional
practice has a strong if not exclusive emphasis on process
assessment hence the very great importance of building up skills
in such process assessment from the very beginning of professional
education and training. I have introduced peer review of this sort
to doctors and dentists (Heron, 1982) and to teachers, researchers,
managers and others.
Sometimes I use a truncated version in which the
self-assessment is done mentally and retrospectively on past
practice, then shared with peers: in this way the whole procedure
can be done at one session. The full-blown model can run through
many cycles of individual work and self-assessment, peer review,
individual work and self-assessment, peer review and so on. As
such it is an educational model, a professional development model
and an action or experiential research model in which the procedures
of professional practice are developed through action and review and
the criteria for assessing them are likewise developed. There is
clearly an important future for this approach.
I wish now to mention briefly the four parts of the
assessment process itself. First, there is a decision about what
to assess: whether process or product and then which bit of
process or which product. Secondly, there is the all-important phase
of deciding which criteria to use in the assessment. Thirdly,
there is a decision about how to apply the criteria, whether
individually and serially, whether collectively and simultaneously;
whether to weigh the criteria equally or differentially; whether to
have pass/fail results only or whether to have a range of
qualitative or numerical grades. Fourthly, there is doing the
assessment itself: applying the criteria and coming out with the
result. If what is being assessed is the assessment process itself,
then we have a fifth part.
The most critical part other than doing the
assessment itself, is deciding which criteria to use. Because of the
prevailing authoritarian system, people are not used to criterial
thinking. Some staff in traditional institutions have difficulty:
they do not make the criteria which they unilaterally use explicit
to themselves and each other, let alone to their students. So an
important part of facilitating self and peer assessment groups is
consciousness raising about criteria and criterial thinking. I have
explored two alternative strategies about criteria with these
groups. One is to start with each person generating criteria and
then, through sharing and discussion, move on until there is an
agreed set of criteria to which everyone subscribes, and which each
person subsequently applies in his self-assessment and which all use
in the peer feedback. The other strategy is for each person to
generate, say, three primary criteria; these are then shared, and
each person in his self-assessment uses any three from the total
list he may retain his own and others', or use others' criteria
entirely; peer feedback is given in terms of whatever criteria he
has used on himself.
The first strategy emphasizes common standards, the
second strategy emphasizes autonomous standards, which also have the
benefit of the pool of peer wisdom. Which emphasis is appropriate
depends on the sort of group, on what is being assessed, and on the
purposes of assessment in relation to the wider community. In my
judgement, common standards are more appropriate when technical
issues are the focus of assessment; whereas autonomous standards are
more appropriate when personal and interpersonal issues are the
focus. Again, common standards are more appropriate when there is a
high level of accountability to the wider community for the
provision of technical, expert services; autonomous standards apply
more when accountability is primarily to oneself and one's intimates
for personal values being realized.
Collaborative assessment
Collaborative assessment I see as an important
intermediary stage between traditional unilateral assessment of
students by staff, and the sort of self and peer assessment model I
have used in continuing education. In collaborative assessment, the
student assesses himself in the light of criteria agreed with his
tutor, the tutor assesses the student in the light of the same
criteria and they then negotiate a final grade, rating or judgement.
This model can be introduced and applied quite quickly to students'
course work by staff working in the authoritarian system although
it then stands in somewhat glaring contradiction to the model
applied in final examination assessment. Still, if course work
counts for some percentage of final marks, then the student has had
some small say in his own degree award.
Typically, in the current educational climate,
collaborative assessment is made on students' work. It could,
however, even within the traditional system, be about process
issues: thus the assessment could be about how the student plans his
time, paces himself over time, uses available resources (library,
lectures, seminars, his academic tutor, other students), takes
notes, reads books, writes essays, and so on. Indeed it is typical
of the restricted educational awareness that widely prevails in
higher education that so little attention is paid, relatively, to
how students manage their end of the learning process. But it is
probably best to start practising collaborative assessment on
students' work handed in. There is a weak model and a strong model.
The weak model applies where criteria of assessment
are already laid down, made explicit to staff and written out, and
where the system does not allow for any current modification of them
either by staff or students. In this case the tutor can make the
following moves. (1) Inform the students of the criteria and explain
that they are non-negotiable and why. Share your own views on both
these matters. Agree with students on the most acceptable
interpretation of criteria that you and they find problematic or
objectionable. (2) If a rating or grading method is laid down for
how to apply the criteria, then discuss this with students and seek
to reach agreement on the most appropriate way of using this. (3)
Invite the student to assess his or her work using the criteria and
the agreed method of applying them. He can do this first mentally
and then verbally. (4) You then assess the student's work using the
criteria and the agreed method. Compare, contrast and discuss the
two assessments. (5) Negotiate and agree a final assessment.
The strong model applies where there are no criteria
of assessment laid down, and what they are and how they are used is
left to staff discretion. There is usually some sort of grading
system, so whatever the criteria are, their application has to be
fitted into this. But there is space here to launch students into
criterial thinking, to encourage them to start thinking about
setting themselves standards of excellence by which to assess their
own work. In this model stage (1) is different, but stages (2)
through (5) are the same as in the previous model. There are also at
least two alternative versions of stage (1): ( la) Where students
have great difficulty in thinking in terms of criteria, present them
with your own list, ask them to discuss each item, to seek
clarification on it, to raise arguments for and against it, to
propose modifications, deletions or amendments to it, to raise
issues about the list as a whole any items not included that
should be included and so on. Continue until there is general
assent. ( lb) Where students are better able to think in terms of
criteria, invite each one to work out his own list, have the
students share their lists and then share yours with them. Collate
all the lists, continue discussion and debate until there is general
assent to a final composite list.
What are you to do if students insist on criteria
that you find totally
unacceptable? There are three basic
solutions (1) You can set the thing up so that you have final powers
of veto. It is important to tell students in advance about this. (2)
You can reason with them until they grasp and are persuaded by your
arguments about the irrationality of their criteria. (3) You can
invite them to use the irrational criteria in assessing their own
work and so discover by experience whether they really believe in
them and want to use them. In my judgement this is the best
strategy. It means of course that you and the student will not be
using identical sets of criteria in assessing the student's work.
But this can be interesting too.
In my experience of using collaborative assessment
in one-to-one tutorials on undergraduates' essays, there is a
definite tendency not large, but noticeable for students to mark
themselves down. This is not surprising, given that years spent at
the receiving end of unilateral assessment make for a somewhat
negative self-image. But once the process is under way, students
show an authentic conscientiousness and thoroughness in the way they
handle it.
For the future, I see collaborative assessment as
the next step forward, first with respect to students' course work,
then with respect to final essays and examinations. As more contract
learning comes in and students start to determine their own learning
objectives and learning programmes to a greater or lesser degree,
then collaborative assessment will tend to have as its primary focus
how the student is handling the whole learning process as
distinct from what it is that he has learned, although
assessment of products will presumably always be relevant and
important.
Collaborative assessment between staff and student
can also be interwoven with a variety of self and peer assessment
procedures on the student side. Thus a student can first go through
a self and peer assessment exercise with his fellow students, then
take the assessment that emerges from the exercise into a
collaborative assessment session with his tutor. A more adventurous
model involving greater staff-student parity is one in which the
tutor participates directly in the self and peer assessment session
between the student and his fellow students, and the tutor, the
student concerned, and his peers negotiate together until an agreed
assessment is reached.
References
Peters, R.S., (1966) Ethics and Education, London: Allen
and Unwin.
Heron, J., (1974) The Concept of a Peer Learning Community, University of Surrey:
Human Potential Research Project.
Heron, J., (1977) Behaviour Analysis in Education and Training,
University of London: British Postgraduate Medical Federation.
Heron, J., (1981) 'Experiential Research Methodology' in P. Reason and J. Rowan (Eds), Human Inquiry: A Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research,
Chichester: Wiley.
Heron, J., (1982), 'Peer Review Audit' in
Assessment, University of London: British Postgraduate Medical
Federation.