Implementing democratic
assessment in higher education
Learning from an action research project with
students
Will Curtis & Jane McDonnell
De Montfort University
Enhancing Student Feedback – Best Practice
Workshop, 8th February 2012, De Montfort
University
Context
• The value of constructivist pedagogic approaches –
students as active participants (Windschitl, 1999)
– BUT disconnect between teaching and feedback
• Higher education as fertile ground for democratic
practice:
– Levels of freedom and equality
– Political agency
– Changing demographic of student body
• Collaborative work in assessment and feedback in HE
(Pryor & Crossouard, 2010; Webb, 2010)
Why democratic feedback and
what kind of democracy?
• Democracy as:
– Transformation through dialogue – students and teachers
as active co-constructors of meaning and knowledge (and
the subsequent liberatory potential of education) (Freire,
1993)
– Disruption and conflict – challenging the grounds of the
debate/ framework for discussion (Mouffe, 2005; Ranciére,
1999; 2006)
So….
• Challenging the framework of current feedback practice:
– Criteria, authority, relations, kinds of judgment, expertise
Assessment relations - Adapted from Heron (1988)
1
Staff decide all
issues
2
Staff decide some
Staff with students
decide some
3
Staff decide some
Staff with students
decide some
4
Staff decide some
Students decide
some
5
Staff with students
decide some
6
Staff with student
decide all
7
Students decide
some
Students decide
some
Students decide all
4
Relation to existing research
• Significance of dialogue in feedback for academic progress
(Bloxham & West, 2007; Bloxham and Campbell, 2010)
– Exploring dialogue in feedback from a democratic
perspective
• Importance of students coming to an understanding of
academic quality that fits with tutors’ expectations (Sadler,
1989, 1995; Hounsell et al., 2008)
– Using radical understandings of democracy to explore the
possibility of challenging the framework for discussion –
criteria, authority, expertise
The intervention
• Employed student as researcher on the project
• Student-led focus group discuss current feedback
practices with Ed Studies students
• Conducted with level 4 students
– One lecturer with two students (three times)
• Students and lecturers write reflections
• Conducted with level 6 students on ‘Radical
Educations’
– Two lecturers with two students (two times)
– Student-led focus group immediately after
intervention
– Students and lecturers write reflections
‘Demystifying’ feedback
‘Expertise’
- Science
- Fractured
Social and emotional discomfort
- Prescriptive
- Clear/clean
- Inhumane
- Formulaic
‘Democratise’
- Art
- Holistic
- Organic
- Fuzzy/Messy
- Humane
- Unpredictable
Social and emotional discomfort
• “…you have to have strong people doing this though, some people just
don’t want to give their point of view and just make everyone happy then
that’s where it could fall down”
• “….you have to be honest and not feel guilty or take things to heart”
• “It’s hard as well to give an honest mark when the person is sat next to
you if you know they would want higher than what you have in mind in
case you upset them”
• “….difficult to give someone a mark when there sat next to you. I think you
were brave to be honest”
• “I can take criticism when it’s on the sheet, you just bin it, but when
someone’s sitting and telling you then it’s harder.”
• “….you might have someone that totally disagrees and some people may
get quite angry or emotional, I don’t think everyone could do this.”
Democratic feedback cycle
‘EXPERTISE’
Participation
Plurality
Competence
Self-confidence
NEXT
Selfconfidence
Transparency
Competence
Participation
Plurality
Transparency
• “…looking at the marking criteria it make you realise how difficult it
is to give someone a number as often you may hit some of the
points from two or three brackets which makes it really hard”
• “…it gave me more understanding of my work. If I had this from the
first year I think I would have been getting really high marks by now.
It would have given me more understanding of what was required
of me. It’s good knowing what the lecturers want themselves and
also it gives you that understanding to why you don’t get a good
mark and that to be explained and how to improve.”
• “I met some of the criteria but not others…. I was in a certain band
but then not others so it makes it in the lower part but that shows
how insignificant they really are.”
• Back
Participation
• “…critical of your own work as you would know I have
to give this a mark and speak about it and defend it”
• “…we discussed and explained things that hadn’t been
clear in the essay so it gives you scope to explain things
better and explain what you meant when you wrote
something”
• “….if you only did it in first year when you got to
second year and got a mark you weren’t happy with it
would be like you didn’t have any control of it
anymore”
• Back
Plurality
• “…highlights how different people mark and it seems fairer to have 4
people with differing opinions decide as oppose to just one person give
you a mark”
• “I found it difficult as we had both different ideas of what made a good
essay. Like you thought I had used to many quotes whereas I didn’t think
you had used enough. We both had very different styles of writing so it
was hard to compare and mark them”
• …“The points that were made were valid and everyone didn’t just go along
with it, it was just we had all picked up the same point. That surely makes
it more valid and allows you to see it more?”
• “I felt like one person influenced the whole group first and then everyone
just agreed. Like as soon as someone mentioned something then the
whole group went along with it and that influenced it too much”…
•
Back
Competence
• “I feel that it’s a shame to do it on the last essay I ever
wrote as I feel doing this throughout would have improved
my grades. Would have understood how could get more
marks and which areas I was doing well and what I could
improve on. I think as well I would have used the marking
criteria more when reading my work back so you could
judge yourself before you gave it in as you would know you
were going to have to have an idea of what you thought
you had got”
• “…it does make you understand better your mark”…
• …”yeah it makes you see your strengths and weaknesses”
• Back
Self-confidence
• “I also found it hard as I hate people reading my
work, so having three people that had read it
discussing it with me weird. But I actually think it
was really good and helpful and I enjoyed doing
it”
• “….it helps you to understand marking and make
you more likely to pay close attention the criteria
and maybe gives you more confidence to contest
things that you’re not happy with”
• Back
So democratic assessment….
• Challenges taken-for-granted assessment
relations and authorities:
– What is a good piece of work?
– Who decides?
• Demystifying feedback processes as educational
experience in and of itself - beyond academia to
broader democratic engagement
• Requires sensitivity to, and careful negotiation of,
student lack of confidence and emotional
dynamics
Implications – where next?
• Some interesting paradoxes:
– Distinction between expertise as role (the ‘expert’) and
expertise as quality (skill, knowledge, understanding….)
– Counter-Enlightenment ?– Does a ‘scientific’ approach to
feedback mysticise it?
• Feeding into our ESCalate funded project examining
student-lecturer collaborative enquiry and
Education Studies assessment feedback practices
• Considering and developing more practicable forms
of feedback relations based on participation,
transparency, plurality, competence and selfconfidence