Katherine Hinchey

Changing pedagogy: vocational learning and assessment

These notes are part of a series for the book.

Outline

1. Introduction
   1. Assessment in Australian vocational education and training (VET) pre-1990s
   2. The new emphasis on assessment
2. The changing context of VET
   1. Changing dynamics of the workplace
   2. Changing needs in VET
   3. The growth of knowledge-intensive learning
   4. The hollowing out of the middle
   5. Revitalized interest in lifelong learning
3. The need for a new approach to VET assessment
4. Sustainable assessment: a new practice in assessment
   1. Engages with standards and criteria and problem analysis
   2. Emphasizes importance of context
   3. Involves working in association with others
   4. Promotes transparency of knowledge
   5. Fosters reflexivity
   6. Builds learner agency and constructs active learners
   7. Considers risk and confidence of judgment
   8. Promotes seeking appropriate feedback
   9. Requires the portrayal of outcomes for different purposes
5. Linking assessment to pedagogy
6. Implications for VET

Notes

Background (not completely mentioned in the text): In 1990 Australia’s education departments created a framework for implementing competency-based training in their vocational education and training (VET). Competency-based training emphasizes what a person can do after the training, with an emphasis on meeting industry standards and a de-emphasis on individual achievements as a result of the training.

Before 1990, assessment was norm-referenced. After, assessment was criterion-referenced (or, competency-based).

After reforms:

• Curriculum took a lesser role, and assessment took a larger role
• Learners are judged more on what they can do, not what they know
• More people became formally involved in assessment
• There are now requirements for “evidence-based assessment” (accumulation of evidence that can be judged against the standards)
• Some feel that the role of teachers is marginalized

Reasons for the reforms

There was a shift in the workplace such that workers were more responsible for their own skills development. This shift occurred when there was an increase in:

• Moving from one job and/or employer to the next
• Broad job classifications
• Holding more than one job at the time
• Being a contractor

When these changes happened, VET needed to help in proving that their program provided “employability” to the worker.

• Workers wanted to leave VET with a portfolio that proved they had specific skills and knowledge
• The skills/knowledge required is not a static list; there’s a need for lifelong learning

Need for change in assessments post-reform

One problem with assessment after the reforms is that students were not learning how to assess their own performance. This is particularly important for lifelong learning. ‘While any given assessment activity may be terminal in the present qualification, it is an expectation that learners learn and assess throughout their lives…. Learners need to learn how to establish their own standards and how to judge whether they are meeting them. They will never learn this if standards are always provided and learners do not have practice in determining appropriate standards for themselves’ (Boud et al., 2012, p. 128). The authors of this article call their proposed changes to assessment ‘sustainable assessment’ (Boud et al., 2012, p. 129).

Before (currently?), assessments were either summative (for example, to certify learning) or formative (to aid in the learning process). The proposed sustainable assessment is to prepare students to be lifelong learners, and to be able to assess their own learning. These types of assessment activities would:

• Make sure students understand existing standards, criteria, and ways to analyze problems
• Underscores the importance of locating issues within their context, so that the person can know what must be considered and what parts of their work would benefit from the feedback of others
• Involves working with other members in a community of practice
• Makes the process of analyzing tasks transparent to the learner
• Links new knowledge to previously-existing knowledge
• Involves the student in creating assessments, with a focus on producing (not reproducing) knowledge
• Encourages taking meaningful risks
• Promotes getting and using feedback, from a variety of sources, and moreso than getting grades
• Provides a way of proving achievements (for example, with a portfolio)

Boud had previously published articles about self-assessment. The idea of sustainable assessment may include self-assessment, but is broader and somewhat different in focus.

Questions

If you create an assessment task that would help learners be more effective in judging their learning, what would it be? What type of learning would it assume, and how would that be supported?

See also

The authors mention several sources of idea for sustainable assessment — here are a few that caught my eye:

• Situated learning and communities of practice: Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
• Identity and learners and the construction of tasks as learning: Boud, D., and Solomon, N. (2003) ‘”I don’t think I am a learner”: acts of naming learners at work’.
• Social construction of assessments: Kvale, s. (1996) ‘Examinations re-examined: certification of students or certification of knowledge?’

Posted on April 22, 2016 By Katherine
Categories: books Tags: assessment, Boud, communities of practice, competency-based assessment, criterion-referenced assessment, E846, Falchikov, Hawke, workplace learning