Suggest that you look up Dan Dennett's description of applicee evaluation,
Dennett, Daniel 1995 Darwins Dangerous Idea pp. 501-505). Somewhat more
literary than the writing in most professional education journals, but no
less accurate for
that. What's most interesting about his account is
1. That he describes how it is done rather than how it should be done,
'including the operation of real-world constraints (notably time
limitations and the
entrenched nature of grading)."
2. He describes more fully the range of selective pressures on academic
assessment
proceedures than most studies I've read.
Nearly all the work on student assessment that I'm acquainted with
concentrate on cognitive and curriculum issues and overlook the many other
measures involved in student assessment. The practical limitation of this
kind of research is to be found in its essentially pragmatic approach, e.g.
"what are effective practices of assessment, ...?" This restricted focus
ignores such issues as time limitation and the entrenched nature of grading
largely because it fails to regard the role of assessment as an integral
part of the whole learning/teaching complex. Yet, despite the questionable
effectiveness of the pragmatic approach for student assessment, we should
take notice of how well the restricted methods of "effective student
assessment" are integrated into the characteristically instrumentalist
approach of academic educational practice in general (like
large-scale/efficient classes - your irony is in place here). We also
should attend to how well this approach to education is implied by the even
more general and widespread envisionment of the relationship between the
effectuator of social policy - the teacher, and the body politic,- the
students, as a strictly instrumental one. Isn't it strange that when
reseachers in quantum physics (as well as anthropology and psychology)
address problems of social relations they assume a distance between the
effectuator and affected that is only ever fully realized in researches in
classical physics?
Sorry if this does not get you where you want to go, but it seemed to me
that you wanted two rather contradictory kinds of information; the
parameters for effective assessment of student performance, and measures for
the largely social-cultural selection of aspirants for future academic
positions. For the former there's all kinds of material, but as for the
latter, there are more literary works and T. V. series on the subject than
serious research.
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Noah Finkelstein" <nfinkels@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 8:19 PM
Subject: assessment query --- practice of university assessment
> Hi all --
>
> Recently I was posed the question below and thought that maybe some xmca
> folks might have good references on assessment in large-scale /
> "efficient" classes (yes, the "" indicate irony). The question about how
> to effectively assess students come from the university physics world but
> seems relevant to many disciplines. In short, the question is given the
> real-world constraints (notably time limitations and the entrenched nature
> of grading) what are effective practices of assessment, and what related
> research is there?
>
> I'll happily take any comments off-line and then repost a summary of any
> interesting tid-bits.
>
> Thanks much.
>
> Cheers,
> Noah
>
> Noah Finkelstein
> soon-to-be-leaving-LCHC
> nfinkels@ucsd.edu
>
> ---------- Forwarded question _____
>
> A lot of [research] ... seems to be to basically be saying that if you
> provide a lot of individual feedback to students as to their level of
> understanding and what they need to learn the material better, studies
> show they do learn better than if you ignore them or just give them a
> simple grade ranking them relative to the other students. [...] What I
> would like to see is research on what minimum elements (and hence most
> cost effective) can achieve formative results. Even more useful would be
> a practical study that accepts the fact that students are conditioned to
> see grading as the primary incentive to attend or work in a class and
> looks at the best way to grade things to best achieve desired learning
> goals and attitudes in the students. In other words, what works best in
> the real world in which most faculty and students currently exist? Do you
> know any useful references on that?
>
> I would be curious to hear about [any related research on assessment]
> since grading questions are so much a part of the effective and cost
> efficient teaching issue. A big fraction of the faculty and TA time is
> devoted to grading but it is really unclear what is the best amount. I am
> reasonably confident that I know the limiting cases. If every bit of
> teaching time is devoted to grading, students probably will not learn much
> nor have a good attitude, and similarly if zero time is spent on it,
> results will not be very good. However, where is the optimum between
> those limits and what are particularly good and bad practices seems
> remarkably unclear and undiscussed, particularly considering the central
> role it has.
>
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