Deliberative Assessment for Integrative, Reflective, and Lifewide Learning

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 apre-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.com
ncepr.org/darren(slides here)

Deliberative Assessment for Integrative, Reflective, and Lifewide Learning

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