Deliberative Assessment for Integrative, Reflective, and Lifewide Learning

Darren Cambridge June 8, 2010

PebbleBash, Telford, UK

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

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?

WHAT DO WE VALUE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL LEARNING AND IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT?

Authenticity

• Finding truth through examination of what is unique about oneself

• Enacting that difference through creative expression

• Protecting choice as a core value

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.

“Finding the Thread in My Life”

Integrity

• Consistency and coherence over time (lifelong)

• Consistency and coherence across roles (lifewide)

• Achieved and asserted through narrative

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

Symphonic Employability

• Career identity integrates– Human capital

(competencies)– Social capital– Adaptability

• Cultivated by narrative- Ashford et.

al.

Social Integrity

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

IMPLICATIONS FOR HOW WE DO ASSESSMENT

Three curricula

Kathleen Yancey, Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Competencies

• Communication• Critical Thinking• Strategic Problem Solving• Valuing• Group Interaction

• Global Understanding• Effective Citizenship• Aesthetic Awareness• Information Technology

Rubrics

• 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

Liberal Education for America’s Promise• Knowledge of Human Cultures

and the Physical and Natural World– Through study in the sciences

and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts

• Intellectual and Practical Skills– Inquiry and analysis– Critical and creative thinking– Written and oral

communication– Quantitative literacy– Information literacy– Teamwork and problem solving

• Personal and Social Responsibility– Civic knowledge and

engagement—local and global

– Intercultural knowledge and competence

– Ethical reasoning and action– Foundations and skills for

lifelong learning

• Integrative Learning– Synthesis and advanced

accomplishment across general and specialized studies

VALUE Intercultural Rubric

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.

A New Role for Competencies

• Standardized: Matching performance to a pre-defined set of outcomes

• Deliberative: Capture standards all stakeholders value as enacted in practice and examining alignment of both student and programmatic performance

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)

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

Liberal Education for America’s Promise (LEAP)• Knowledge of Human Cultures

and the Physical and Natural World– Through study in the sciences

and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts

• Intellectual and Practical Skills– Inquiry and analysis– Critical and creative thinking– Written and oral

communication– Quantitative literacy– Information literacy– Teamwork and problem solving

• Personal and Social Responsibility– Civic knowledge and

engagement—local and global

– Intercultural knowledge and competence

– Ethical reasoning and action– Foundations and skills for

lifelong learning

• Integrative Learning– Synthesis and advanced

accomplishment across general and specialized studies

Eportfolios for Contested Outcomes

• Measurable learning outcome: Ability to articulate a reasoned stance based on evidence

• Makes multiple understandings of outcomes visible

• Requires reasoning to be articulated• Grounds understanding in evidence and

experience• Puts multiple positions into conversation

NEW WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT EVIDENCE

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

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

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

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

An Example: Richard Zepp’s ePortfolio

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

danah boyd as suicide girl“impression management is an

inescapably collective process” (2008)

Participation

• Neither fully production or consumption • “Materially connected”: meaning and

functionality dependent on connections (Perkle 2008)

• Challenges conventional conceptions of “authorship” and “ownership” and “control”

Deliberative E-Portfolio Assessment

• Assessment as both a social and individual good means moving:

• From measuring outcomes to putting authentic, integral self-representations into conversation

• From consensus to contestation • From proof to inquiry • From authorship to participation with

authenticity and integrity

Available from Jossey-Bass, October, 2010

Stylu

Published by Stylus, 2009

dcambrid@gmail.comncepr.org/darren (slides here)