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Abolishing Marking

A Dangerous Idea

This presentation gives an overview of the philosophical basis and drivers that can radicalise education and assessment practice:

  • Diffusing power;
  • Subverting the gaze;
  • Expanding the medium;
  • Exploring beauty;
  • Crowdsourcing wisdom;
  • Integrating learning.

This presentation looks at philosophy rather than practicalities. But the technique has been sucessfully trialled in

  • Scotland
  • England
  • Singapore
  • Sweden

The Bare Bones

“There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations”

Currently power over knowledge is invested national bodies, who chose those who have power over knowledge in their own image:

  • the old, the establishment, the traditional;
  • the white, the male, the heteronormative;
  • the reified, the disciplined, the encoded.

Comparative judgement, with its fuzzy parameters and diffusion of assessment power creates space for autonomous learning, valued from alternative perspectives

  • the new, the radical and the innovative;
  • the female, the Black and the queer;
  • the obscured, the holistic and the subconcious.

Allowing learners to create autonomously effects a transfer of power over artifact creation from the keepers to the creators of knowledge.

This is submitted to the assessing institution as a body of work which exemplifies their abilities, achievements and understanding in the area

Students use those artifacts to put together a narrative framework which exemplifies the area of achievement to be assessed

Students select artifacts from their collections which they feel best demonstrate their achievement in the area of assessment

The parameters of assessment are broad, cross disciplinary and holistic.

Students create artifacts for no purpose other than their own amusement, enjoyment, learning and entertainment.

The assessing institution collates these submissions

These judgements are aggregated based on optimisation techniques to create a rank order of which ones are collectively considered to be representing the construct under consideration best.

The stakeholders judge each pair according to their internalised standards of quality

The assessing institution presents submissions in pairs to stakeholders asking them to judge which one of the pair is better

Awards are made on the basis of students' place in the rank order

What this presentation is not about

What this presentation is about

THE GAZE

HOLISM

POWER

MEDIUM

BEAUTY

AGGREGATION

Allowing candidates control over medium and content allows them to determine their own means of communication and the best way to express their learning

An assessment task is usually designed with a format and media of presentation in mind, restricting candidate expression.

Allowing candidates to choose their own medium for artifact production enables not only the content but the manner of communication to be assessed

Producing an artifact for a defined purpose makes explicit the assessment process - making learners self conscious and aware of the all-seeing examiner

Allowing learners to have their learning multiply assessed gives confidence to experiment with new or non-traditional learning

Allowing learners to create without self-conciousness allows genuine abilities and interests to be displayed

having only one marker, no matter how well trained assessing a piece of work is a significant risk and a huge responsibility

Restricting the medium and content, restricts the manner in which the message being presented can be communicated, necessitating particular objectives to be met rather than the overarching aim.

Allowing learners the opportunity to pursue their interests without artificial boundaries allows for more motivated learning

Where learning objectives need stating explicitly there is necessary but artifical boundaries between areas of knowledge

I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there.

Among several patterns classified as "comparable" by some subjective observer, the subjectively most beautiful is the one with the simplest (shortest) description, given the observers particular method for encoding and memorising it.

Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

An acknowledgment of the full spectrum of consciousness would profoundly alter the course of every one of the modern disciplines it touches... A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing ...

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium ... result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

Schmidhuber's Beauty Postulate

Jaques Lacan, Ecrites

Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

Ken Wilber, An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad

Allowing assessors to be presented with artifacts which follow a theme rather than formally encoded knowledge schemas allows them to make more authentic judgements

Allowing stakeholders to assess independently effects a transfer of power over artifact valuation from the producers to the users of knowledge.

Allowing assessors access to artifacts created authentically gives them a greater insight into candidates abilities rather than merely their ability to regurgitate acceptable discourses

Allowing for aggregated assessment shares the responsibility eliminating bias and error.

The production of artifacts uninhibited by restrictions on content and medium, allows for choice over emphasis, design and communication, enabling more "beautiful" artifacts to be created

Multiple assessments give assessors freedom to express their own professional and social values.

Allowing assessors to see the creations of candidates presented in their own terms allows them to view their beauty on their own terms

When students produce without boundaries, themes emerge which are not bounded by subjective and arbitrary divisions.

Allowing assessors access to the choices that the candidates make enable them to better understand the candidates approach

With comparative adaptive judgement, students are free to choose the medium most appropriate to communicate their ideas in the format most appropriate allowing them to express themselves freely.

Producing an assessment without the assessment framework allows for more authentic production, enabling more free and exploratory learning

How this can be applied to

Curriculum for Excellence

Experiences and Outcomes

The starting point is the artifact which is submitted for assessment. Yet this artifact may be made up of many smaller elements - each in themselves artifacts in their own right, which can be combined and recombined to display different elements of conceptual understanding, but critically these artifacts can be produced based on the interests of the learner.

The below is an example of an outcome from the Science Experiences and Outcomes at the Fourth Stage (roughly equating to S2/3, just prior to examinations.

I can help to design and

carry out investigations into

the strength of magnets and

electromagnets. From

investigations, I can compare

the properties, uses and

commercial applications of

electromagnets and

supermagnets.

SCN 4-08a

Consider three submissions each with three pieces of evidence offered as demonstration of competence in this E&O

Pupil 3 submits

1. A paper on the health and safety implications of using supermagnets.

2. A presentation on the use of supermagnets in wind turbines

3. A cost/benefit analysis on the use of different magnetic materials in an industry context.

Pupil 1

Submits

1. a video showing themself trying to pick up different objects with differing strengths of magnet

2. A paper on what electromagnets are found in their home and the manufacturing processes of these electromagnets

3. A research paper on the fridge magnets that a relative has in their home and a comparison of the magnetic strengths of each.

Pupil 2

Submits

1. A (picture/video) of a piece of art made from magnets that they have created.

2. A photo-essay on magnets used in industrial contexts with

3. A video of a choreographed dance showing the attraction and repulsion between magnetic fields

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