Here, There and Everywhere
Some of the most contentious stories in education are the stories of assessment. Here the debate about educational values and purpose is brought into sharp relief as what seem like ever-more narrow forms of ‘credentialism’ are pitched against the role of
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2. HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE Measurement, Assessment and Attainment
INTRODUCTION
Some of the most contentious stories in education are the stories of assessment. Here the debate about educational values and purpose is brought into sharp relief as what seem like ever-more narrow forms of ‘credentialism’ are pitched against the role of education in social progress. ‘Assessment’ in all its various guises and interpretations is central to this debate. In this chapter I utilise elements of the ‘5Rs’ framework as suggested by our editors, in order to: (1) highlight the ways in which the practice and uses of assessment have been applied through policy in recent years; (2) consider the effect this has had on teaching, learning and the culture of schools; (3) suggest ways in which this dominant, regressive narrative is refracted in practice and ways in which it can be questioned and resisted. I argue for a continuing renewal of assessment as a formative and interactive aspect of teaching and learning where more critical and empowering pedagogies and learning identities can develop. My experience as a primary school teacher, a university-based teacher educator and a researcher of education leads me to conclude that while the negative aspects of assessment systems for accountability are clear enough, assessment itself does not need to have a stifling effect on schools if teachers and learners focus their efforts on formative assessment which supports learning through enquiry. I believe that genuine formative assessment involving teachers and learners themselves can contribute towards a critical pedagogy that empowers learners and offers resistance and counter-balance to the dominance of a data-driven, outcome-led sensibility. This consideration of policy, culture and renewal of assessment is necessary for a number of reasons, and not least because as Fisher argues, an ideological position such as that represented in the accountability culture ‘can never be really successful until it is naturalised, and it cannot be naturalised while it is still thought of as a value rather than a fact’ (2009, p. 16). While my narrative analysis is located within the education system in England, this discussion is keenly relevant in a range of international contexts as assessment becomes an evermore central tool of control within neoliberal education policy throughout the world (Hill & Kumar, 2009; Smith, 2016). One of the defining features of neoliberal education seems to be that while its policies and character are mediated to a certain extent by governments T. Rudd & I. F. Goodson (Eds.), Negotiating Neoliberalism, 13–26. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
M. HAYLER
and party politics, it has tended to transcend them through a range of international bodies, associations and fiscal alliances that promote it as part of their own agenda (Harvey, 2005; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Giroux, 2015). The editors of the current collection propose the 5Rs of ‘remembering’, ‘regression’, ‘reconceptualisation’, ‘refraction’ and ‘renewal’ as a
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